Storytime (Psycho-neighbor)

One day somebody's gonna say to me, "ohg Queen we all know that you live in Katutura!", what you need to get is that there are so many stories, so many happenings that happened in Katutura and I feel like it will only ever be up to me to share them with whoever that is willing to read, or write them down for my future self... something like that.

Anyway, I've lived in shacks all my life. For those of you who don't know, shacks in Namibia are 'houses' built with metal(such as the one used one rooftops). I remember there was a time when I would try and see from my mind's eye how it felt to be living in an 'actual house'. That was way back. Shacks-plural because we moved around a lot and it was from one shack to the next, one location to the next, always settling for the ones that was close to our schools, had proper water and sanitation and where being safe was really the least of our worries.

We usually had an outside toilet with a shower in it. Sometimes we were the only tenants, other times there were other tenants too, whether it was in the main house or a shack next to our shack. At the time of this incident I'll be sharing soon, we were sharing the yard with other tenants who lived in the main house. One of them was a guy in his mid-20's or older who lived with his girlfriend, he will be my subject of interest in this post.

The thing with sharing an outside toilet with three other tenants, with their families, is that it makes it almost impossible to take a shower whenever you want because people would want to use the toilet and they can't do that if you are taking a shower in the same bathroom. Sort of. So, you can choose to shower immediately after school when almost everybody is gone or maybe in the middle of the night- highly unlikely because we didn't have hot water, and strangers would sometimes just walk in and use the toilet too.

With all the things mentioned above, I will now get to the main story. Feel like I had to say that to give you an idea of what you are about to read.

One day, sometime ago on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I decided to take a a bath in the house because well, of all the reasons mentioned above. I filled a large bowl with water and got right down to business. My mom was in the living room, talking to the lady who lived next door, I think. I started bathing and singing out loud and dancing(it was an energy boost) otherwise I would just have the water run down my skin and then dry myself up and get dressed.

Most shacks built with old zinc have holes in them, lucky for us, my mom is sort of an 'interior designer' in her own world so she goes crazy with curtains and furniture and stuff so the curtains covered the holes in the 'wall' or so I thought.

Suddenly I felt like somebody was watching me and I thought that was really strange so I went and peeked into one of the holes but saw no one. I wasn't surprised that I felt that way because there was always a bunch of guys around and well, they smoked weed almost all the time so you never know.

I got all naked but kept dancing and stuff, feeling myself. Again, I felt like somebody was watching me for real. I decided to go towards the bed where they couldn't probably see me and texted my mom and asked her to go see if there was someone behind the house because I swear I saw somebody looking at me.

A few seconds later I heard my mom arguing with some guy and I got dressed as fast as I could and went out to see who it was, turns out, I was right about somebody watching me take a bath and he was one of the tenants that lived in our yard, Together. With us. He lived with his girlfriend. Sick. WTF?

My mom and I got so mad. I was embarassed and I felt disgusted by the sight of him. I couldn't understand why he did that. It made me question how many times he had done it before and if he had done it to my mom and sister as well. At that time it was only the three of us. My mom said that she would call his parents and talk to them but I told her that I was gonna walk to the police station and ask for a warning. Which I did.

He got away by the time I got to the station (my mom texted me), and so I told the cops that I would text them when he got home. I decided to take that step because I didn't want guys like him to get away with doing stuff like that and possibly do it again. I wanted him and others to know that I wouldn't keep quiet about something as sick as that.

A day later, I called the police and they showed up within a few minutes. They asked him why he would do such a thing while he was living with his girlfriend for fuck's sake?! They said that it was small acts like that would eventually turned into something worst like rape. They made him apologize, I nodded my head and I think they knew that it would take a while before I let that sink in. I was glad that he got warned by the police and everybody found out what he did,

Weeks after that, I felt ashamed every time I went to the store or walked by the boys that sat in the street because they spoke with that guy. They were friends after all. It made me wonder if they spoke about me, or how they always did that and got away with it. I was even scared because I thought that it gave the boys an idea that they could just go take a peek every time or something.

And that, my friends, are some of the things that you experience in Katutura but at the end of the day, you keep your head high and let them know that they can't mess with you at all because you, you are destined for great things and would never settle for less. But I'm sure you know that!

hearts, Queen