Katutura [R]evolution

Katutura is a low-income district in the Namibian city of Windhoek (see "The Katutura Township of Windhoek"). The name literally means, "The place we do not want to settle." Katutura was originally built by the South African Administration around the time of World War I as a sort of crappy rental district where all black residents of the town of Windhoek were forced to move to so Windhoek could be exclusively composed of white German residents. Lighter "coloured" individuals were allowed to live in between. Not surprisingly, the non-white residents of Windhoek didn't want to leave their nicer homes in the Old Location to live in a segregated ghetto where they would be forced to pay rent for 1-room cement houses without running water or electricity, so they termed the new living area Katutura and posed a mass demonstration that ended rather bloodily and badly for them. In 1990, by the turning of God, Namibia gained independence from the South African Administration. Consequently, a lot of effort was put into improving the Katutura area infrastructure, and residents were allowed to either buy their homes at low cost or were simply given their homes. By 2006, Katutura had become a popular point of arrival for rural migrant workers seeking a new urban life of opportunity, with approximately 600 new people arriving every month to an area with a population of 150 000. Katutura was hard pressed to provide even basic housing and sanitation for the newcomers. The Old Location remains the most desirable real-estate of Windhoek, with infrastructure and property value decreasing the further away from it and closer to the outer edge of the Katutura district a person goes. Nevertheless, today, provisioned with more freedom and ownership for the area that now makes up 2/3 of Windhoek, some of the locals have begun calling Katutura Matutura, which means, "The place where we want to stay." I heard a Christian College professor give a sermon on Katutura earlier this year. He stated that Katutura means, "The place where we will never settle," and emphasized the people's desire to move out of Katutura towards the interior of the city once they had found appropriate employment to support them. From this, he admonished Christians to be like that in our faith- never content to just sit where we are, but to push forward, deeper; "Further up and further in!" if you prefer C. S. Lewis' wording (The Last Battle, p. 213). I think that was a worthy lesson. And yet. And yet, the people have renamed Katutura. There is a beauty to be noted from the changed name of the place by the residents themselves, manifesting a change of attitude toward their home borne of the transformation and redemption of their community. So where am I? Am I an ambitious migrant worker in Katutura, or a proud citizen in Matutura? The two places co-exist in Namibia, and perhaps I live in both worlds simultaneously also. I take pride in my work, and I generally feel satisfied in my roles of family connector, friend support, and young adult church leadership. In that sense, I am dwelling in Matutura. And yet. And yet, I feel time as the steady pull of a river moving past me, to unseen places I wish to go. But I don't have a boat to get there, and there's so much to do where I am that somehow I always run out of daylight before the opportunity comes to build my boat. The And Yet tells me I am biding my time in Katutura. What do you say, God? I say that right now you're training, and you need to be patient, but you also need to plan for the future. Keep fishing in the river where you are- you need to eat; yet, spend a little time each week working on your boat. You can't swim to where you're going. Or teleport. Teleporting is out.