An aspiring pharmacist in India

Charné Khoases
My name is Charné Khoases, a 19-year-old doing a bachelor's in pharmacy at Sanskriti University in Mathura Chhata, a small city in India. Mathura is a holy city, and almost everywhere you go you’ll see huge statues of Indian gods.

I decided to study in India because living is affordable here and my mother also studied here. I really wanted to study in Namibia, but getting into the University of Namibia (Unam) is not easy at all.

The school is not really a beautiful place.

India is one of the most polluted countries in the world, so it’s not clean, but they try.

Right now, I live in a hostel. The hostel has numerous rules. One of them is about food.

There are many international students here, and most of us are not vegetarian, but cooking meat is not allowed. Getting meat is also an extreme sport here since it’s a holy city and most Indians are vegetarians. Getting chicken is almost like "going to buy drugs". You go with your bag, and as soon as you get the meat, you hide it and try to get out of the place immediately.

Apart from the ban on cooking meat, we may not wear anything revealing.

I got help from an agent to get into the university here. They have an office in Windhoek. My registration wasn’t difficult; it all went smoothly.

The woman at the embassy was an angel. She helped so much and she had all the patience in the world. She passed away in a car crash a few months ago.

India is safe at night. By safe, I mean you can walk with your phone and someone won’t grab it.

Also, for some reason, many people here act as if they’ve never seen black people.

Sometimes, people follow us around and touch our hair and stare at us.

And some Indians are just racist. They don’t even try to hide it. I remember I was looking for a place to rent and I was told "no black people allowed" directly to my face. They also said we "black people" do drugs. Some women, when they see us coming, grab their children and start walking fast. All in all, India is amazing and beautiful, apart from this city.