The man smiles at me. “We’ll be home soon.”
I wonder what “home” is. I know it’s not my home. I don’t have a home. Not anymore.
I’m almost asleep when the wagon stops again. The man jumps down from the wagon and calls out to someone. I hear strange noises and see lights. I try to see where the lights are coming from. They aren’t stars. And they’re not fires. All I see is the dark shape of a house. I can’t see the house very well in the dark. But it looks big. And it’s square. Don’t white people know that snakes like square houses?
The man carries me toward the house. I hear another voice. It’s a woman. She talks with white people words. I close my eyes when we go inside the house. There’s too much light. It hurts my eyes after the darkness outside. The man puts me down on something soft. I open my eyes very slowly. A white woman is bending over me. She doesn’t look happy.
She turns away. I hear her talking to someone. I don’t know her words. But her voice is hard. Yesterday, I would have been scared. Now, I’m too tired – and I have too much pain – to be afraid.
When the woman comes back, she’s not alone. A Nama woman is with her. The Nama’s eyes get big when she sees me. The white woman tells her something. The Nama shakes her head and backs away from me. The white woman says the words again. The Nama woman slowly comes toward me and picks me up like I’m a baby. I know she doesn’t want to touch me. I can tell by the look on her face.
She carries me into another house. There’s no outside between the two houses. She carries me from one house right into the other. The white woman comes behind us. She makes the wall move to hide the doorway. I can’t see into the other house anymore.
The Nama woman tells me to stand up. She takes off what’s left of my skin dress and drops it on the ground. The ground isn’t dirt. It’s covered with something smooth and hard. She kneels on the ground and starts to take off one of the beaded ankle cuffs Mama made for me. I pull my leg away. She grabs my leg and holds it still. She takes the cuff off and reaches for the other one.
“No,” I say. “Mama made these for me. They show I’m a Herero woman.”
“Those are the old ways,” she tells me in Herero. “You can’t go around half naked. You must dress like a good Christian woman now.”
Christian? I don’t know that word.
The Nama woman stands up and takes off my wrist cuffs. She drops them on the ground with the skin dress and ankle cuffs. The white woman picks up my clothes and puts them in the fire that burns in a hole in the wall. I reach for them. The Nama woman holds me back.
Tears fill my eyes. “They’re all I have from Mama,” I tell her.
The Nama shrugs her shoulders. But she looks at me sadly. “You must forget the past,” she says. She reaches for the jar tied around my neck.
“What’s this?” she asks.
I grab it away from her. “The white snake hunter gave it to me. It’s so I will always have water.”
“You can keep it,” she says. “But you can’t wear it around your neck. I’ll put it in our room for you.”
Room. It’s another word I don’t know.
The Nama woman pulls me over to a big, big pot filled with water. She makes me sit in the pot. The water is hot. I get very scared. I think they’re going to cook me. I try to get out of the pot. The Nama woman holds me down while the white woman rubs me with cloths dripping water. The rubbing opens my sores. It hurts. A lot. She rubs me so much I think my skin is going to fall off. Then she rubs my head hard. I try to pull away. The Nama woman holds me too tightly.
Finally, the women let me go. I stand up and step out of the pot. I’m so tired I almost fall. The white woman holds me. The Nama rubs me with another cloth. It’s bigger. And it’s not wet. When she’s done, she throws it in the fire with my skin dress. The cloth has blood all over it.
“You can sit down now,” the Nama woman tells me. She puts something sticky all over me. It burns.
I try not to cry.
“It’s all right,” she says quietly. “It’s medicine. It will help heal your sores.”
“White people medicine?” I ask. My voice is a small whisper.
She smiles and nods.
I pull away from her. Tate said white people’s medicine poisons the Herero soul. It’s too late. The medicine is all over my body. I try to rub it off. But it doesn’t come off.
“Stop that,” the Nama woman says. “The medicine is good for you.”
The white woman pulls something over my head. I can’t see. I try to get it off.
“Hold still,” the Nama says. “It’s just a nightgown.”
Nightgown? I don’t know that word either. I wiggle my head up through an opening. The nightgown is long, like my skin dress. But it covers my chest. My neck. And my arms. And it’s not skin. It’s soft. It looks like clouds.
The Nama woman helps me stand. She shows me a long shiny thing. I jump when I see her standing in it. How can that be? She’s standing next to me. What kind of evil magic is this?
She laughs softly and points at the shiny thing. The Nama in the shiny thing points back. “Don’t be afraid,” she says. “It’s not magic. It’s a mirror. And that’s you.”
I look at the other person standing in the shiny thing. She’s like the bony carcasses I saw in the veld. Huge sores cover her skin. They’re bleeding. The blood drops onto her white dress. She scares me. She looks like death. I hold my hand out to keep her away from me. She holds hers out toward me. I step backward and fall.
The Nama woman picks me up and carries me to another house. Again, we don’t go outside. Instead, we go up and up and up. There are many houses here. All on top of each other or next to each other. The Nama carries me to a house that’s on top of all the other houses. She puts me down on something soft and pulls a big cloth over me. It’s very warm. This house is darker than the others. It makes me want to sleep.
The Nama woman won’t let me. “You must eat,” she says. She feeds me warm water. But it doesn’t look or taste like water. It’s brown. And it has pieces of meat in it. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten anything but dried berries and uintjes. The food is very good. But I can only eat a few bites. I’m too tired and weak to eat any more.
I lie back and close my eyes. Sleep comes quickly.
I sleep and sleep and sleep. But it’s still dark when I open my eyes. I look around, trying to see where I am. I should be walking. I don’t want the soldiers or the Herero hunters to find me. I sit up. I’m not on the ground. And this isn’t the veld. Or home. I think very hard. I remember a dream I had. About a white man taking me to his house. And two women putting me in a cooking pot and trying to take the skin off me. I remember a very bad shiny thing with a hide-covered skeleton. The women told me I was the skeleton. I lie back down. It was just a dream. I close my eyes. Maybe I’ll have a better dream.
Someone shakes me gently. I open my eyes. A Nama woman is bending over me. I don’t know her. But I think I’ve seen her before. She smiles. I try to get up. She puts her hand against me. “You can sit,” she says. “But no standing. You’re not strong enough.”
Her voice scares me. It’s the voice from my dream. She’s the one who tried to cook me. I move away from her.
She laughs. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.” She holds a gourd to my lips. “Drink,” she says. “We need to fatten you up. You’re skin and bone, child.”
I take a drink. I taste little bits of meat. After a few small sips, I turn away. I’m too tired to drink more. The woman shakes her head. “You must drink it all.”
I drink it and lie back. The woman softly rubs my head. “You poor child,” she whispers as my eyes close in sleep.
* * * * *
A small noise wakes me. I look around. I can’t see much in the twilight. It will be dark soon. I need to walk. I’ve been in this hiding place too long. The Herero hunters might find me. I sit up and look across the veld. But there’s no veld. I’m in a strange square house. And I’m
lying on something high above the ground. I slide down until my feet touch the ground. It’s covered with something soft and warm. I look down at my legs. The sores have almost healed. I hold my hands out. The sores there are almost gone, too. I must have been sleeping for a long, long time.
I stand and look around the house. It has many things I don’t know. I try to find the doorway. I see an opening up high. But it’s not a doorway. It doesn’t touch the ground. I walk over to the opening. Something covers it. Something I can see through. Like the jar the snake hunter gave me. I stand very, very tall so I can look through the opening. I almost scream. The opening is very high above the ground. It’s as high as the trees. There’s no way to get out of the house. I can’t jump that far.
I hear a sound behind me. I turn to look. The wall is moving. It was hiding the opening. A Nama woman comes in from another house. She has food. She smiles when she sees me. “Good. You’re up, ” she says. “You must be getting better.” She makes the wall move again so it hides the opening. “I’ll put your food here on the table.” She puts the food on something by the high opening. That must be a table.
The woman talks to me while I eat. “You had me scared. I thought you were never going to wake up. You slept for many days.”
“Where am I?” I ask. “And how did I get here?”
“Don’t you remember? Herr Jurgen brought you here in his wagon. He found you in the veld. You were dying.”
I dreamed that a white man put me in a wagon. Am I still dreaming? I touch my face to make sure my eyes are really open. “Is he going to send me to the death camp?” I ask the woman.
She laughs. “No. You will work for the Jurgens. They’ll take care of you. And give you a home.” She smiles. “They took me in a few years ago. They are good Christian people. Many Herero and Nama work for them. But the others live in huts on the farm. You and I are the only ones in the big house.”
She walks around, moving things. “This is our room.” She points to a big thing against the wall. It’s like the thing I’ve been sleeping on. “That’s the bed where I sleep.”
Room. Bed. Farm. There are so many new words. I try to remember them all.
The woman moves something on the table. It’s the jar the snake hunter gave me. “You can keep your things here.”
“What do I call you?” I ask.
“Marthe.”
“That’s not a Nama name. And it’s not Herero,” I say quietly. “Who is your family?”
“My family is gone. And my village. The soldiers burned it.” She sighs. I see sadness in her eyes.
“I thought the Nama were friends to the white people,” I say.
She sighs. “That was yesterday. When the Nama saw how the big chief of the white people was killing all the Herero, some of our warriors rose up against him. So the big chief said all the Nama should be killed, too. The Nama chiefs made a treaty with one of the other white chiefs. He said if we promised not to fight the white people again and gave the soldiers all our boom sticks, we could keep our villages and our cattle. Our chiefs did what he asked. But then the big chief sent the soldiers to burn our villages and kill our warriors. The rest of the Nama were sent to the death camps. I ran away before the soldiers burned my village. The Jurgens gave me a home.”
Marthe lights a small fire in a jar and puts it on the table. “But that’s the past. Now, we have only today.” She sits on her bed. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Jahohora, the daughter of Mutihu and Tutejuva. Tate is a great healer,” I say.
“Frau Jurgen will give you a new name. A Christian name,” she tells me.
“What is this ‘Christian’?”
“It’s the way of the missionaries. You have a lot to learn.” Marthe laughs. “Where is your family now?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been looking for them for a long, long time.” I tell her about hiding in the mountains. About Tate and Mama going for water. And the sound of the boom sticks. I tell her about running into the Omaheke to find my uncles who joined Maharero. About all the death. And the snake hunter. I tell her about wandering in the veld. About meeting the Herero hunters. Rubbing the poison plant into my skin. And still not knowing what happened to my family.
“The postman might know,” she says.
“The postman?”
“He’s a missionary. But he’s a Herero,” she tells me. “He goes to the white people’s farms, preaching to their Herero and Nama workers. He knows all the Herero and Nama who survived and where they are. The white people like him because he helps us become Christians. We like him because he brings us messages about our families.”
“Will he come here?” I ask.
She nods. “He will be here before the rainy season.” Marthe picks up my empty gourd. “Too much talk,” she says. “It’s time to sleep.”
MY NEW HOME
“Penee.” I open my eyes. Marthe is bending over me. “Penee,” she says again, “you need to get up and eat.”
I sit. “Why are you calling me Penee?” I ask.
“That’s your name.”
I shake my head. “My name is Jahohora.”
She smiles. “Frau Jurgen gave you a new name. A Christian name. It’s Petronella. But I’m going to call you Penee. It’s shorter. And it fits you better.”
“I don’t want a new name. I like Jahohora. It’s the name Tjikuume gave me.”
“No one can take that away from you,” Marthe says. “But Frau Jurgen will call you Petronella. You’d better get used to it.” She watches me eat. “When you’re done eating, you must get dressed. Then I’ll show you the rest of the house. And you’ll begin your lessons.”
“Lessons?”
“All the things you need to know to work in the white people’s house.” She leaves the room while I eat the rest of my food.
When Marthe comes back, she has a long cloth. “This is for you. It’s your new dress.”
“I can’t wear that.” I back away as she brings it toward me. “It’s the color of kudu. I’m from the Omukuatjivi clan – the people of the kudu.”
“You must forget the old ways, Penee. They’re gone. We must live by the white people’s way.”
I let Marthe take off my nightgown and pull the dress over my head. The dress is not skin, but it’s heavy. It covers all of me. It’s like Marthe’s dress. But not as fat. I don’t like it. I sigh. I will learn the white people’s way. But I’ll never forget the past, I tell myself. If I forget the past, I will forget my family. And the ancestors. I must never do that. Without them, I will forget who I am.
Marthe shows me how to make the wall move. She tells me it isn’t a wall. It’s a door that lets us into the rest of the house. She takes me through many rooms. She gives me words for all the things I see. It’s a lot to remember.
She leads me outside to a small square hut. She opens the door. Inside is a seat with holes in it. She shows me how to pee like white women. I laugh. Why do they need a house just for peeing?
“It isn’t right to show your body,” Marthe tells me. “It also isn’t safe. Especially if white men are around. Even Herr Jurgen. When white men see women uncovered, they act like animals.”
Marthe lifts her dress a little. She has many more dresses under it. “That’s why I wear so many petticoats,” she says. “They make it harder for the white men to make me lie with them. Frau Jurgen is a good woman. But she would make me leave if I have a baby without a husband. I don’t want to leave here. This is my home. It will be your home, too.”
I begin to like my new home. I’m never hungry or thirsty. I’m warm at night. And I’m not alone. I slowly learn to live the white people’s way. When I’m with Marthe in our room, we use Herero words. I have to speak the strange words of the white people in the rest of the house. They are hard words to say and hear.
I do many things for the Jurgens. I help Marthe clean the house, wash their clothes, and cook. I also milk the cows and play with the Jurgens’ children. I like playing with Joh
anna and Lukas. But it makes me sad. They remind me of Karemarama and my young cousins.
Life is good at the Jurgen house. As long as I do what Frau Jurgen tells me. She’s as hard as the words she speaks. I’m afraid she’ll send me to the death camps if I don’t do everything she wants. She’s always telling me to hurry, to stop being lazy. “If there were a fire, everything would be burned up by time you got there,” she says.
When we’re alone in our room, Marthe tells me I’m no longer the proud daughter of an important healer. “This may be your home,” she says, “but you must not forget that you’re a servant here. You must move quickly, like a servant.” She smiles to soften her words. “Frau Jurgen is a good woman, and she has a heart. But it’s made of stone.”
We both laugh.
The next day, I walk faster when Frau Jurgen needs something. I still hold my head high and stand tall. I may be a servant, but I am a Herero.
German soldiers often stop at the Jurgen house. Sometimes, it’s just one or two. They come for food and a place to sleep. Or to get a new horse. Other times, there are more. And they have Herero they’re taking to the death camps. The soldiers come in the house to eat with the Jurgens. But the Herero stay outside. They’re chained together. I never see them eat. Most of them are very skinny. Like I was when Herr Jurgen met me in the veld.
I feel sorry for the Herero. I want to feed them. And I want to look at them to see if I know them. Marthe tells me I must stay away from them. “There’s nothing you can do to help them,” she says as we make dinner for the Jurgens and their guests.
I help Marthe carry the food into the dining room. One of the soldiers watches me as I serve everyone. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. I want to leave the room. But Frau Jurgen likes for Marthe and me to stay in the dining room while they eat. Someone might need something.
The soldier asks me for more water. His leg touches mine while I’m filling his glass. Then he wants more meat. He puts his hand on my arm and thanks me when I put another piece of wildebeest on his plate. A little later, he drops his fork on the floor. “How clumsy,” he says, looking at me. “Would you get a clean fork for me?” I give him another fork and then bend down to pick up the one he dropped. He rubs his leg against my body. I jump up and quickly move to the other side of the room. He smiles and continues to watch me.
Mama Namibia: Based on True Events Page 33
