Monsters

Last night, I escorted a friend to her house. This involved taking a taxi with her, deep into one of the locations of Windhoek. A location is like a ghetto; and this location was about an hour walk from town. It was around 10 pm, and there were not many taxis out and about.

The taxi that my friend and I were in was not headed back to town. After dropping my friend near her house I was dropped at the nearest petro station where the driver thought I might be able to find a different taxi that would take me into town.

I waited at the petro station for about 15 minutes, before finding a taxi that was willing to take me back into town. I noticed my driver was going to buy more petro, so I paid him in advance. As we were driving away from the petro station, he asked if it was alright if we quickly made a turn (I quick stop at one of his friend's houses) before heading into the town. I said "sure, no problem."

The driver was thoughtful for a moment, and then made the following question-statement "you’re not afraid?" I told him "no, I live in a location in Southern Namibia."

For a while, we talked about locations and how white people did not go into them.

With a calm seriousness, the black driver said to me, "will you tell the rest of them that we are not monsters? We are people just like them."