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By the time they all realized what I’d done and where I was going, I’d have left the planet. In my absence, my parents would growl to each other that I was to never set foot in their home again. My four aunties and two uncles who lived down the road would shout and gossip among themselves about how I’d scandalized our entire bloodline. I was going to be a pariah.
Who knew what I looked like to these people who didn’t know my people so well.
Everyone looked as if the sun was his or her enemy. I was the only Himba on the shuttle.
Our ancestral land is life; move away from it and you diminish. We even cover our bodies with it. Otjize is red land.
Here, I was an outsider; I was outside.
They could do anything to me, at this point. Best not to make trouble.
“It is either that or I will start a war with them that I will finish,”
My father didn’t believe in war. He said war was evil, but if it came he would revel in it like sand in a storm.
Thankfully, they knew not to touch my hair again. I don’t like war either.
I’m not proud to say that I have some Desert People blood in me from my father’s side of the family, that’s where my dark skin and extra-bushy hair come from.
My tribe is obsessed with innovation and technology, but it is small, private, and, as I said, we don’t like to leave Earth. We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward. No Himba has ever gone to Oomza Uni. So me being the only one on the ship was not that surprising. However, just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.
But I never got the chance to tell him that my hair was braided into the history of my people. Because what happened, happened.
I was so far from home.
“Tribal”: that’s what they called humans from ethnic groups too remote and “uncivilized” to regularly send students to attend Oomza Uni.
I plunged my two fingers into my new concoction . . . and scooped it up. I spread it on my flesh. Then I wept.
“I’m glad,” it said. “You were beginning to fade.”
The first to answer was my mother.
