There is a Herero proverb I’ve never been able to shake.
“The ancestors only give bad luck to make us remember them.”
When I first heard that, I thought it was dark. And then I thought about it more.
What does it mean to live in a world where the dead are still speaking? Where the past is not finished, not filed away, but active – demanding attention, demanding acknowledgment?
That’s not superstition. That’s wisdom. The ancestors who were killed in the Herero and Nama genocide are still speaking through every reparations negotiation, every court case, every family that kept the stories alive.
They will not be quiet. They should not be quiet.
We have a choice: hear them and respond – or let the bad luck of forgetting compound.
What tradition of remembrance — from your family, faith, or culture — do you carry forward?
PHOTO: Within the circle of this fence in Toasis is a sacred spot where the holy fire of Hosea Kutako, the Herero Paramount Chief, once burned. A warrior and survivor of the genocide, Kutako laid the path for the future of Namibia while ensuring the past was not forgotten.