Visit from an old friend from Namibia
Last night I had a visit from Trevor Stone.
He is an old friend I had not seen for more than 30 years. He had come from Britain with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) to work at St Mary's Anglican Mission in Odibo, on the northern border of Namibia, as a
mechanic, maintaining the church's vehicles. He was now in South Africa to build a test bed for jet engines for the South African Air Force. Since we last met we have both married and had children, and we are both somewhat greyer, but he was still recognisable.
We were both in Namibia for about the same length of time, but Trevor seems to have maintained his interest and has revisited Namibia several times since then. So he brought news of people from Namibia that I had not heard, and has remained active in support of the work of the Anglican Church there. I learned that Nestor Kakonda, who in the early 1970s had been secretary of St Mary's Mission, had been killed in a South African raid on Cassinga in Angola, during the wars there. Trevor collected books about Namibian history, and collected information especially about the Kwanyama people and their history. He was arranging for collections of Kwanyama artifacts in Britain to be photographed, so that they could be sent to the University of Namibia and schools there, to be available to students so they could know their
own history.
Since I was deported from Namibia in 1972 I have only been back once, in 1991, and have maintained less contact with people that I knew there. It was good to meet Trevor again, and to share his enthusiasm, and to see how deeply Namibia had affected him. It has inspired me to try to reestablish contact with others I knew there.