"When I came to Prague, dude, that was something I had never experienced in my life. I don't know. When we flew in, I hadn't been in such a cold. In such a cold! And we just saw white - white - white - white - white. I thought it was raining. And no! But it wasn't raining! Then I saw... Then I took the snow, but I didn't even know snow existed. I took it, I wanted to put it in my mouth. Hmmm. That was such an experience, we looked like we were morons from Africa." - "And what did you think it was?" - "I didn't know what it was. We looked like idiots! The way we were walking there. Because it was cold, we were cold. Then I thought it was sugar! The first time I thought it was sugar. I took it in my mouth and then, 'What is this?! Is it water or what?' So I thought it was sugar. Because I know sugar is white. And as we flew in there, I thought it was sugar, but it wasn't sugar! That's what it was. That was an experience. We looked like morons."
"A country we did not know, for us... Namibia, it's something different for us. We hadn't lived there, we had been in the bush in Angola. But when they said we were going back to Namibia, for us it was something different. Because then our teachers said, 'Namibia'. Oh, damn. Boys, be careful. There's AIDS in Namibia.' Because they read about it, that a lot of people had AIDS in Namibia, they said thirty percent. AIDS had already been for a long time in Namibia. And we said, 'No. Our country is just the Czech Republic.' The one, as we were growing up, the republic that we knew. And we didn't know anything else. Only I remember being in the bush, but I think it was so harsh what I had experienced there in the camp. The planes, the bombing, these things. When I was in the Czech Republic, I thought I was going to live there until I died. But it wasn't like that. Then the Namibians [came] like this and then they said, 'We're going to Namibia.' And like this. And then we went back to Namibia. There was nothing we could do. Because we were young, the children, that was the order we were given to go back."
"In those Bartošovice, it was something different. Always in Africa there are these traditional huts. And when we got there, they said it was a village, so it was something different. Electricity - we did not have electricity as we were in exile. There was no electricity, maybe only our president and ministers had electricity, but we didn't. We were using lamps. Hmmm. And when we got there, dude, white... Even the rooms where we slept. This was all white. That was something different. It was like being at Disneyland. It was something amazing. I hadn´t even known it was gonna be like this. Because how we had been in the camp... as I'm putting things together now, how we had been in the camp in Angola, Zambia, and then I came to some environment where there was winter, when I thought it was sugar. But it wasn't sugar, it was snow. And then I came to some castle and then I got some room and then [there was] the water. How we showered and all that. And how did we shower in Angola? We just showered with our hands. You got just some... what do you call it?" - "Lavor? [A sink]?" - "Yeah, some kind of sink like that and then this with your hands. But it was something different over there [in Czechoslovakia]. That was something amazing. Because I hadn´t known it was going to be like that. We hadn´t known there were countries that were advanced like that."
Jafet Veshiinge Haundjodjo was born on 26 July 1976 in the Nyango exile camp in Zambia. A few years later he was moved to Lubango camp in Angola where, as a young child, he experienced the 1983 bombing of one of the settlements belonging to the camp by the South African army. In 1985 he flew to Czechoslovakia together with 55 other Namibian children as part of the Czechoslovakia‘s international aid to the Marxist SWAPO movement. This became the ruling political party after the liberation of Namibia. He spent the years 1985 to 1988 with a group of Namibian children at the castle in Bartošovice in the Nový Jičín region. From 1988 to 1991 he lived with a group of Namibian children in a former spa in Prachatice. In 1991, at the request of the Namibian government, he returned to his homeland together with other children from Prachatice and Považská Bystrica. He later returned to the Czech Republic thanks to a special scholarship for „Namibian children“ after finishing secondary school to pursue university studies. He obtained a bachelor‘s degree in health care at the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. In 2022, he was living in Namibia and working as a nurse supervisor in the prison clinic at the Gobabis Correctional Facility.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
