Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro
Fate has its own ways, as it also has its own choosings.
Last Sunday, I was driving back from the coast after attending the Ovaherero-Ovambanderu Reparation Walk in Swakopmund. I was not conscious that a few hours behind me an acquaintance – a good friend, a sister, a mother, a teacher, a wife – and her company, including her two daughters, were also driving back to Windhoek on the same road.
Fate, ever stalking us on many of our national roads, decided to strike between Karibib and Okahandja. And its choice was none other than my friend (sister) and all her passengers.
Why and how it decided on her, baffles me? Some of the ways of fate and death are that it never provides rationale or answers for its actions. And this time around, we are once again left to its arbitrary and autocratic doing.
Most painful is that the strike was mercilessly fatal. As a result, my sister and company are no more.
I am sadly compelled to switch my memory back more than 26 years ago. It was in the-then thriving mining town of Arandis. That particular week was an eventful one in the education of this country. The Teachers Union of Namibia (TUN) was having an indaba. There I met Priscilla (Pii) Ndamona Simon, later to become Anghuwo, in the company of the likes of Barnabas Berra Mungunda and Tangeni Erkana.
Having started teaching only a year or two before, there was no mistaking that a teacher destined to put education on a different plain in due course, had been born. This one could read from her affable personality, vibrancy, enthusiasm, friendliness, motherliness, humbleness and humility.
Our affinity was natural. It never eroded despite, our pressing responsibilities in later years, professionally, collegially, family-wise and otherwise. The spark that initially ignited it never dimmed. Despite the demands of the times, it was just a matter of seconds and the sparkle was there –
rock steady as super glue.
I do not only find it hard to accept the fate that has been visited upon us, but I am also not sure how to describe her being no more. Has she departed? Has she gone? Has she left us? What has she actually done? Is she going into exile? Why if Namibia is free at last?
I know these are all desperate questions of disbelief at the thought of having been deprived of someone special and precious. All of us who have been close to her and have had the privilege of being her friend, wife, teacher, aunt, niece, may we find solace on just having had this privilege of her star shining on us.
Up until her death, Ndamona was a head teacher at the St. Barnabas Junior Secondary School in Katutura. A dark cloud hung over this school this week, and one does not know for how long. This is only because of the treasure that she has been to the school whether to learners or fellow teachers or parents. I happened to be in Katutura this week at a house of one of the pupils she had been teaching. This pupil was a total soul wreck. This does not only speak volumes of the teacher she was, but also her persona.
In this hour of our separation from her, one just prays that this is temporary and only in body, but not in soul and spirit. Ndamona, it has really been a pleasure, a joy and a privilege to have known you and for being everything that you have been to many of us. I only wish the ongoing campaign to stop the carnage on our roads could have come earlier than this. Maybe then … maybe then …!
Mwarengo, my Sister, my Brother Dave, Dear Meme Helena, Learners, Teachers, I am at a loss for words. Let the mere memory of her remind us of the good times we had with her and of the good things she has been to us and has taught us.
Farewell, my sister Ndamona!