The sun is setting on Windhoek. Tomorrow will mark the end of my first month here. I measure my time in Namibia like pouring water in a tall glass. I want to drink up everything. I don’t know when I’ll finish my cup or how I’ll feel after everything has settled in my stomach, but I’ll tell you this- it feels so good to be here. Beyond my balcony, I see a purple sky resting on dry hills. I’ve never seen sunsets like the ones I’ve seen in Namibia. In the morning the sun will rise, and I’ll see my walls light up bright orange.

Namibia is filled with colors- deep oranges, wilted yellows, cool browns, and faded greens. Everything feels overtaken by winter, but I’ve never seen a winter like this. It’s cold in the mornings but when you stand in sunlight, it’s so nice and warm. Windhoek defies the odds of nature that I had set for it before I even came here.

In those first few days after I landed, I didn’t have the capacity to process anything. While my visa was processing and I thought about the prospect of being deported after 5 days, I went to rugby games, listened to people crack jokes in Afrikaans, and watched people laugh at braais. I was introduced to what seemed like Namibia’s three racial groups: White, Colored, and Black. I learned about the segregation of Windhoek’s neighborhoods in colonialism and learned how to buy phone credit. I ate Kapana right off open fires and learned how to dance to Amapiano and local music. I was asked about my red hair and found myself showing my black roots to anyone who asked if it was really mine. I was called Black, Colored, or kind of Colored and Black. I didn’t want to be related with concepts of being “Colored” but I remembered that American concepts of race and identity are not the same as Namibia’s. I learned that accepting differences in ideology meant the beginning of understanding another kind of Black history.  

Those first few days and couple of weeks were marked by experiences of love, longing, homesickness, annoyance, confusion, and unintentional emotional intimacy. At the airport, I cried in front of my host family right when I met them, I laughed until I couldn’t breathe a week later, and I made questionable jokes when I was intoxicated. I held people when they cried, and someone held me when I cried. Every day was filled with contradictions. I expected myself to be in love with everything, but I found myself in disagreement with people and people in disagreement with me. I’m still learning to be comfortable with difference, even though I desire “sameness”.

Those first few weeks felt like I was constantly at the whim of the perceptions of others. I became a symbol of Black Americanness/Americanness. The way I pronounced my “r’s” were made fun of, and I was drunkenly berated for America’s ignorance on international issues. I was crucified for a country that I never pledged my allegiance for. I was asked about Love & Hip Hop and what I thought about people here saying “nigga”. I hated the “you Americans,” conversations or having “Americans” be shorthand for ignorance. In those first few weeks, it was much easier to put on a performance of who people thought I was rather than telling them who I was. I missed how it felt to be around people who knew me and easily saw me.  

Yet, I loved the other side of it. I loved when people thought I was Namibian. I have yet to meet a person who didn’t think I was Namibian. Today, when I was in Katutura (which was described to me as the “Harlem” of Windhoek), I was told I looked like I was from the neighborhood/the location. I’ve been asked if I was Herero or Damara. Even today, I was spoken to in Nama by elders in the church. They laughed when I couldn’t respond back or how I struggled with pronouncing the clicks. Today, I was the only foreigner in church.

At 2 AM in the bathroom of a club, I was asked “What tribe are you?” It made me feel like I belonged somewhere. And it’s that guilty pleasure I think many Black Americans have- to belong in a place that isn’t America. It’s that excitement and joy when you find people that look like you whose ancestors were truly from a place they could name and that they know.

I think many of us tell ourselves that we aren’t rooted anywhere. I rebuke the myth that I am not rooted or that my people are from nowhere. My home is the land my ancestors cleared and built houses on top of strange soil. They built a place for themselves where they could have children, find joy, and praise God in the middle of sweet grass fields. But, I gladly accept my home being Africa too- though now, it’s a secondary home and not my first. Africa is now a place with a contemporary history I’m still getting to know, not a lush fantasy of where my ancestors are from.

Yet, I love the idea of being seen as a person from here. I love dancing in a club and hearing someone say “that’s the ancestors in you”. I love that I’ve heard someone speak to me in their mother tongue and expected me to respond back. It feels like a celebration. I find it so easy to forget who I am here. It’s so tempting to fall into another identity. It’s so tempting to take on another history, but I remember that they too experienced the whippings, hangings, and mass murders. There is no place on this Earth where Black people have had an easy history.

I have to remind myself who I am every day. Sometimes I ask God and wait for the answer. I call my family and laugh when I hear the voices of people from my bloodline. I smile when I see my family’s faces mirrored in strangers who walk across streets and wait for taxis. When I remember who I am, I begin to understand what it means to know others. It’s like taking off my shoes so I can walk in grass. It’s only after I take them off that I can finally experience the soil and texture of life. Letting myself be known enables me to finally know others. It took me a month to learn that.