The SUV enjoys driving along one of the few paved roads in Namibia and we share its joy as we watch through the windows the life scattering without order along the edges of the asphalt. Women walking barefoot with their babies on their backs, children carrying water cans, men sitting in the shade, blankets on the ground with piles of firewood, villages with barely five huts arranged in a circle. It is the Caprivi Strip that cuts its way like a narrow spear between Angola and Botswana and forcefully drives the country’s poorest reality into our retinas.
Suddenly, the car brakes, as if reading our minds. A few meters back, we thought we saw a modest school. We turn back.
A few wooden benches and a blackboard leaning against the hut, all by the side of the road. We ask for permission from the teacher, who answers with a smile and a few disjointed words in English. She makes a gentle gesture to the children, whose eyes question us timidly, and their voices rise obediently toward the African sky in a religious song of welcome that fades into the clouds. We show our gratitude for their gift with balloons, T-shirts, pens, and small toys.
But the best gift, without a doubt, is the one we take with us as we drive away with a mixture of happiness and sadness caught in our throats. Looking back, their hands wave goodbye, sketching smiles in the air, and that memory slips quickly into the car to follow the journey with us until it ends up today in this drawer of memories. A few minutes of modesty, of laughter, of helplessness, of dilated pupils, of overflowing life at the foot of a hut.
