Day 27: Kasiki

Picture: Kasiki and his family after German class

In this small community, I’ve found one of the most impressive men I’ve ever met. It would be a shame not to tell you a little about Sigberth Kasiki.

Kasiki came here as a night watchman. Security, he said, is a good way to prove oneself, be promoted, and make a better life. Now, less than a year later, Kasiki seems to do everything around here: caring for and giving tours of the three-legged cheetah, cleaning the pool, gardening, and doing the maintenance. All this happens during the day, so I was surprised to find out that he’s still the night watchman. He’s paid only for three daytime hours; the rest, he laughed, is “volunteer.” The owner and the manager want to reduce his workload, but that they can’t find anyone they trust more than Kasiki.

In high school, Kasiki’s teachers wanted him to pick a trade to study, but he refused. “I wanted to know everything,” he said. “I could not pick just one thing.” Today, at 29, he’s still a student of everything. He attended all my guide-training classes; I’m tutoring him for his driver’s exam; Claudia is teaching him German; and, if I was staying here longer, he also wanted to learn Excel. He comes prepared for all these lessons, studying in his “off-time” and full of questions.

“I never knew leopards were eating fish. But how do they catch them?” he might ask.

“I don’t know, Kasiki. The materials just said they can eat fish.”

“Well, you must find out and let me know.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll add it to the list…”

By the end of one class, I had a full page of obscure questions to research: What kind of fruit can leopards eat? How do they get water from drinking blood? How do they fish? Why is their infant mortality rate so high? Over the next two days, he kept asking for answers, until I had to give him my final answer: “I’m sorry, Kasiki. The Internet doesn’t know.”

Kasiki’s ambition and mental energy are noticed by everyone. The owner and manager give him more responsibilities every day; and the staff watch with a skeptical eye. Kasiki and his family are not Damara, but from the Kavango tribe in the north. That means they are outsiders; and, without family here to help, they are the poorest.

When his wife and daughters (including Anna) joined him on the farm, there was immediate tension between his silent, jealous wife and the Damara women, who teased and laughed at her. Even in the kindergarten, Denzel shuns Anna because she’s Kavango and because she eats the crumbs that fall out of his mouth. But Kasiki avoids taunts, maybe because he is the biggest, strongest man on the farm or maybe because he just doesn’t allow it.

Still, he’s very tender. His face lights up when he sees pictures of his daughters; and he spends a lot of time with them. He can end a violent kindergarten altercation in less than 10 seconds, and he stops Anna’s tears with only a few hushed words in their language.

Today I asked him again the one thing I cannot understand: “When do you sleep?” He only laughed. “Hard work cannot harm you,” he said. “I work hard now, and later, one day… One day I will sleep.”

Video: Kasiki and the farm's three-legged cheetah