How I Ended Up in Norway (I)

Towards the end of my grade 10 year in high school, my mom decided to move me and my little sister, Janet into an orphanage because she had found a job at a lodge outside Windhoek. Below is a piece extracted from my book on Wattpad, 'Diary of an African Teen', where I expressed how the move to the orphanage made me feel and why I felt that way.

"30 September 2016
My mom found a job at a lodge.
My sister Janet and I were brought at an orphanage.
The kids were not bad,they welcomed us instantly. Aunt Rosa Namises was the Housemother and also a Human Rights Activist.
At the beginning I was embarrassed to tell my friends at school that I was living at a Children's Home, but once I said it to them, it was not a big deal. They understood my situation.
The Home was in Dolam, which was quite near to our school. About a 15 minute walk to school.

The place made me feel like it was my home.
At some point I would cry and ask God why I ended up there. But...I pulled through.
I wrote my final exams while I was still living there, I thought I would fail, but I didn't. I missed my mom a lot. I missed the times when mom would be in the sitting room and I would be cooking with Janet or just dancing, or had the weirdest conversations.
Its normal to miss those times.
* * * *
23 September 2016
It feels like I belong here, at the Children's Home.
A volunteer from Norway helped out during after-school hours. We referred to her as Aunt Iselin (we said auntie out of respect).
She treated us like her own. That meant a lot to me.
Another volunteer came from Germany.
She was just 21 years old and yet she had the freedom of travelling alone. That's something I would like to achieve!
Auntie Frieda was also there. She was an amazing woman, still is, who understood what we were dealing with and she devoted her time to us. She and Aunt Iselin prepared food for us and helped us with homework afterwards, creating a warm environment around us.
All these women mean so much to be and they are one of the people that I refuse to forget."

I started writing the Diary in 2017, that's why it's like a reflection of all the stuff that happened in 2016. As indicated at one point, I was not okay with moving into an orphanage while both my parents were alive, I hated even the idea of it when my mom mentioned that to me and Janet a few weeks before. I prayed day and night that she wouldn't take the job at the lodge, that she would find a good job in Windhoek, but she never did and we ended up at the orphanage.

You might be wondering why we couldn't live with my dad? Well, my dad lived quite far from the school and the only real job he had was an on-and-off job, it could be a full-time job too but my dad just did whatever his head told him to, we couldn't keep up with that. My mom knew that if we lived with my dad, there would be issues with taxi money, something about our health and the environment which, frankly speaking, was not safe at all due to the rising number of shebeens in the area and just foul people sometimes. We grew up in that place too but now it was different, and my mom always wanted the best for us, so the orphanage it was!

Janet and I, or my mom, had no idea that the orphanage would be the one place where our lives would change drastically at some point and it was all because we were good friends with Aunt Iselin and Auntie Frieda, the two ladies at the orphanage. Here's what happened:

The four of us, including three/four other girls from the orphanage decided to meet up and go for movies and a walk in town in January 2017 (I think), when Aunt Iselin arrived with her class on a trip to Africa. The meetings eventually became a thing where we would just get together and go out for pizza or something, we did this because; Aunt Iselin was no longer a volunteer at the orphanage, Aunt Frieda had also eventually found another job and some of us were no longer living at the orphanage so we always met up and spoke about what was happening in our lives. Maybe a 'catch-up session' or something.

Our stay at the orphanage lasted a few months and then early 2017, my mom left the job at the lodge so we could live together again.

I remember clearly, it was towards the end of 2018 when we had another meeting with only Aunt Iselin and Auntie Frieda when Aunt Iselin asked about what plans I had after completing high school. They always showed a huge interest in our studies and I must say, whenever I felt like I couldn't go on, they were some of the people I thought of, knowing that they would push me in the right light. We wanted them to be proud of us so we really did try our best at school.

Aunt Iselin mentioned that she could organise with the folk high school where she was teaching, to offer me a free-seat that school year and I agreed with her, thinking that we were just talking. I guess I loved the sound of moving to Norway but even though this talk went on for months, until I eventually got my passport, it felt like I was in a dream-like situation.

In the next post I will mention the time before I got my passport, how I had to go to South Africa for my visa application and in the final post, I will be sharing my first plane experience and how I spent a night at Frankfurt International Airport as well as when I reached my final destination in Norway, Pasvik. Do stay tuned!

NB: I don't have pictures of the first day we hung that's why the others are not in any of the pictures.

excited hearts, Queen