The Current Madness of everyone lining up for DNA tests to verify if ‘that one’ is actually ‘that one’s’ child has me genuinely scared.
I’m nervous because I’m starting to suspect I might not even be my own mother’s child.
It’s a strange obsession for a nation where ‘family’ has always been a beautiful bowl of mystery.
Are we sure we really want to know the truth? I mean, really?
Here is the thing: If we are going to start demanding biological receipts for our fathers, shouldn’t we at least be consistent? Since we are so eager to open that Pandora’s box, let’s go the full distance and check the mothers, too.
You have to admit that half of us aren’t even sure we’re with our ‘real’ mothers. I mean biologically.
Think about it: We are a people raised by the Village Committee. You were born, and within 48 hours, you were handed over to Kuku, whose only real qualification was that she could beat you purple.
Or you were raised by an auntie at Aranos while your biological mother was working in the Van Der Somethings’ kitchen at Keetmanshoop to keep you in school.
By the time you met her, you were already a grown person.
She was just the lady that used to send stampmielies.
If we actually did a DNA test with DiagnoLab on maternal bonds in this country, the results would come back labelled: “It’s Complicated.”
The irony of the Namibian man demanding a paternity test is as tasteless as a brick of Holsum fat. Here is a man who hasn’t seen his own birth certificate since the early 90s.
This is the same fellow who consults a traditional healer when his car won’t start.
Yet suddenly, he wants to put his absolute trust in the high-tech molecular biology of a lab technician named Learnmore Mathias.
Imagine the scene at the clinic: There’s a man sitting there, sweating right through his shirt, waiting to find out if little Junior is truly his.
He’s squinting at the boy, looking for his own nose on a three-year-old’s face like he’s trying to solve a crossword puzzle in The Namibian.
If the test comes back negative, he feels a sense of betrayal.
But if it comes back positive, what then? He still has to pay the school fees, and now he has the added burden of knowing for a fact that the child’s terrible attitude is actually a genetic gift from his own side of the family. Be careful what you wish for.
The truth is, we are playing a dangerous game with reality. Namibia is a country built on the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ principle.
You know perfectly well the neighbour’s little brat looks exactly like your father, but you can’t say a single word to your mother.
We survive because we choose to believe the stories we tell ourselves. If we start peeling back the layers of our genealogy with clinical precision, the entire social fabric might just unravel.
Let’s talk about you for a minute. How were you born to your father in December of 1983 when your father was working at Consolidated Diamond Mines from January to December without a single weekend off? Moenie speel nie, togoba!
Imagine the chaos at the next family meeting at the village.
The uncle with a loose mouth would go: “According to the latest sequencing from the lab, you are actually 14% related to the goat we just
slaughtered and 0% related to the man sitting next to you.”
The ancestors would be utterly confused.
The ‘family tree’ would look less like a tree and more like deurmekaar!
We have this weird idea that the truth will set us free.
In reality, the truth usually just makes the lies we’ve lived with feel nicer.
If we find out that we aren’t ‘biologically’/ who we thought we were, does the pap suddenly taste different? Does the discipline we received from a man we called ‘Tate Wuuleke’ suddenly lose its validity?
We are trading the warmth of shared history for the cold data of a laboratory report, and for what? To win an argument on social media?
I know you value the right to know, but as for me, I am not even sure I am who you say I am, and I am perfectly okay with that.
If we keep digging for the ‘truth’, we’re going to find ourselves very lonely.
Of course, we will have a piece of paper that says we’re 100% related to nobody in particular.
And honestly, who wants to spend Christmas alone just because they wanted to be ‘scientifically accurate’?
Stay in the dark with me.
It’s warmer here.
