Light the Candles

The sun slowly appeared from behind the mountains, its orange rays of light shone directly into her eyes, through the windows of the shack. She saw this view every morning, and every morning, though it was the same, she loved it. She adored seeing the sun lighting up the top of the mountain, making it seem as though it was on fire, the mist adding to the effect of smoke rising. She cherished the sight of the lambs and calves coming out into the paddock when the light began to show itself. Their feeble legs led them in the direction of their mother who was slowly chewing away at the dewed grass. These were the sights that made her want to stay in this village; otherwise she knew that she would have left long ago, to a place where she could have a better life. But she knew she couldn’t complain, her life was much better than some of the families that she worked with. She had parents and a roof over her head, with all the facilities that nearly everyone else didn’t have. This was because she was the daughter of a General in the Namibian Army. This allowed her to have the life that everyone wanted, one filled with opportunities. She, as the daughter of General Alfolabi, had lines of people asking for her hand in marriage, she had the chance to go to school and have a very practical education. She had everything she wanted, but she wasn’t happy. This isn’t because she wanted more; it was because she wanted less. She wanted to be like those who fight hard to stay alive. She wanted to be part of the survival of the fittest without the handicap of being well-off. But she didn’t complain, instead she used this wealth to try and give some of the villagers a better life. This girl’s name was Ebele, and she had many great stories to tell, but they were all replaced with this one single story that changed her life as well as everyone’s around her.

Normally, Ebele would leave her house at around 4.00am to start her trips around some of the familys’ houses. She had a sister called Tariro, and she was a person who would do anything to get a good name, even if it meant doing something that her conscience didn’t agree with, even though she knew it was wrong. Tariro was only a few months younger than Ebele, however she acted like a mere twelve year old child, crying just to get what she wanted. She was the complete opposite of Ebele, she wanted more than what she had, she looked at the village folk as if they were filthy rodents and a burden to the country. But that was the way her entire family saw them. They saw them as a disgrace, not just to Namibia but the whole of Africa. This is what drove Ebele’s heart and head to lie to her parents and go and help the people in the village. Every morning, she told her parents that she was going to school early to get some work done, and every day her parents believed her. In the African culture, lying was a great sin, but if she had told her parents the truth, they would have stopped her from leaving the house altogether. She knew her parents well enough to make this prediction, that’s why she had to lie. However Tariro was on her case, she had been since the very start, Ebele just didn’t know it, until it was too late.

One day, Ebele left the house to make her way to the south part of the village. This area was quite far from her house and so she couldn’t go there very often, but when she did, she would take bags of supplies: food, clothes, games for the children. She had a stock of all these items hidden in a chest under the floorboard in her room, somewhere she knew her parents or Tariro would not think of looking. The way she got the supply was tricky, but she managed to do it every time she ran out. Normally when she went to the south, she would take her entire stock, but that day she couldn’t. She had just restocked the supply of goods, but when she checked the chest under the floorboard, all