A ‘dumpsite’ for people with nowhere to go

AS you drive along the mountainous road running past the informal settlements on the outskirts of Windhoek, you may find yourself in a shady settlement with shacks that run almost into the mountains.

If you take a closer look, you can’t miss the hardship and desperation etched on the faces of the women and children walking alongside the road. A place that was once a Windhoek Municipality dumpsite has now become a haven for vulnerable and orphaned children.This former dumpsite is called the Laurent Kabila Informal Settlement.It is a derelict place in Havana, run by a woman called Meme Lina Johannes who saw a need in Havana and decided to do something about it.She turned her single-room shack into an orphanage which now houses 60 children between the ages of two and 15.”When I moved here, this place was still a dumpsite.I would see children running all over the place unaccompanied.They would get so excited whenever the trucks came to offload garbage.These children were eating every meal of the day in the dumpsite, they looked sickly and malnourished, it was so saddening to see,” Johannes says.”I remember when some of the kids befriended my children, they would often play around my kambashu (shack).When I took a closer look at them, I noticed how filthy and starved they were.I was touched and decided to start giving them food every now and then, but this gesture resulted in more and more children flocking to my house looking for food.My home became a place of refuge.But I didn’t have much to give them and the shack is too small to accommodate them all.”REACHING OUT Johannes tried to ask donations from the community to feed the children, but most people were too poor to spare anything.Gotlieb is a seven-year-old boy who lives with Meme Lina.When asked about the whereabouts of his parents, he shyly answers: “I don’t know where my father is but my mother died.I stayed with my aunt for a little time but there was never food at home, so I started coming here to eat, but now I just live here”.Johannes says every now and then some of the community members contribute a little food, or they get a donation from their church.A foreign tourist occasionally used to buy them groceries, but she has since returned to her country of origin.”Four ladies, one of them introduced herself as Susanna, a tourist from Sweden, came with bags of food, blankets, pots and other gifts.I do not know how she found us, I believe it was by God’s grace.”Then she told me that she heard about the children from one of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children soup kitchens she had visited.She was told about us by one of the ladies that come to help out sometimes and she said that she was so saddened by the story that she got her friends to come and pay us a visit,” says Johannes.RED TAPE She says she has tried to register the orphanage with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, but was advised to register with the Ministry of Health and Social Services and is still waiting for a response.”I don’t know if they will be able to help me, most of the children don’t even have birth certificates,” she says.”We are hours and hours from any sort of services – the clinics, markets, electricity and water.Some of the children are very sickly so you walk for hours to get them to a nearby clinic, once there you are referred to Katutura hospital, when you get there you are faced with long queues, it’s just disheartening.”Most of the children need medical attention, there is no development of any sort in this area, all you see is sickness and poverty.”HOLDING IT TOGETHER Meme Lina, who makes a living by brewing traditional beer and selling vegetables on the street, says every month there are about five new children needing her assistance.Some have parents, but they are either too sick or poor to care for them, while others are orphans with nobody to care for them.Asked whether she has ever tried to locate some of the children’s parents, she said she did that once with a baby she found dumped in the bush near her shack.She looked after the baby for about a year before locating its parents and leaving the child in their care.When she revisited the family some months later, she was told the baby had died.”I was so grieved by that incident that I cannot bear to leave them in the care of their relatives, they are not interested in caring for the children, they will eventually end up on the streets.”At the moment I have 93 children to feed daily and out of the 93, 35 live in the shack with me.I try sending some children to spend the night with the surrounding neighbours, but not all of them are willing to accommodate the little ones.”It’s not healthy for the children to sleep together like this, some of them are constantly sick, but I can’t place them anywhere.I have tried to ask for help so that I can extend the place to accommodate all of them, but I am still waiting, this place is too remote and not many know of its existence.”Besides feeding and housing the children, Meme Lina’s biggest problem is finding the money to enrol them in school.”It is so saddening when you look at their little faces and there’s not much to eat, or when one of them is sick.I can hardly afford to feed the children, right now we depend on my church pastor, Pastor Paul Embeck, for his monthly food donations, and I don’t know how long the church will be helping us.”A place that was once a Windhoek Municipality dumpsite has now become a haven for vulnerable and orphaned children.This former dumpsite is called the Laurent Kabila Informal Settlement.It is a derelict place in Havana, run by a woman called Meme Lina Johannes who saw a need in Havana and decided to do something about it.She turned her single-room shack into an orphanage which now houses 60 children between the ages of two and 15.”When I moved here, this place was still a dumpsite.I would see children running all over the place unaccompanied.They would get so excited whenever the trucks came to offload garbage.These children were eating every meal of the day in the dumpsite, they looked sickly and malnourished, it was so saddening to see,” Johannes says.”I remember when some of the kids befriended my children, they would often play around my kambashu (shack).When I took a closer look at them, I noticed how filthy and starved they were.I was touched and decided to start giving them food every now and then, but this gesture resulted in more and more children flocking to my house looking for food.My home became a place of refuge.But I didn’t have much to give them and the shack is too small to accommodate them all.” REACHING OUT Johannes tried to ask donations from the community to feed the children, but most people were too poor to spare anything.Gotlieb is a seven-year-old boy who lives with Meme Lina.When asked about the whereabouts of his parents, he shyly answers: “I don’t know where my father is but my mother died.I stayed with my aunt for a little time but there was never food at home, so I started coming here to eat, but now I just live here”.Johannes says every now and then some of the community members contribute a little food, or they get a donation from their church.A foreign tourist occasionally used to buy them groceries, but she has since returned to her country of origin.”Four ladies, one of them introduced herself as Susanna, a tourist from Sweden, came with bags of food, blankets, pots and other gifts.I do not know how she found us, I believe it was by God’s grace.”Then she told me that she heard about the children from one of the Orphans and Vulnerable Children soup kitchens she had visited.She was told about us by one of the ladies that come to help out sometimes and she said that she was so saddened by the story that she got her friends to come and pay us a visit,” says Johannes.RED TAPE She says she has tried to register the orphanage with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, but was advised to register with the Ministry of Health and Social Services and is still waiting for a response.”I don’t know if they will be able to help me, most of the children don’t even have birth certificates,” she says.”We are hours and hours from any sort of services – the clinics, markets, electricity and water.Some of the children are very sickly so you walk for hours to get them to a nearby clinic, once there you are referred to Katutura hospital, when you get there you are faced with long queues, it’s just disheartening.”Most of the children need medical attention, there is no development of any sort in this area, all you see is sickness and poverty.”HOLDING IT TOGETHER Meme Lina, who makes a living by brewing traditional beer and selling vegetables on the street, says every month there are about five new children needing her assistance.Some have parents, but they are either too sick or poor to care for them, while others are orphans with nobody to care for them.Asked whether she has ever tried to locate some of the children’s parents, she said she did that once with a baby she found dumped in the bush near her shack.She looked after the baby for about a year before locating its parents and leaving the child in their care.When she revisited the family some months later, she was told the baby had died.”I was so grieved by that incident that I cannot bear to leave them in the care of their relatives, they are not interested in caring for the children, they will eventually end up on the streets.”At the moment I have 93 children to feed daily and out of the 93, 35 live in the shack with me.I try sending some children to spend the night with the surrounding neighbours, but not all of them are willing to accommodate the little ones.”It’s not healthy for the children to sleep together like this, some of them are constantly sick, but I can’t place them anywhere.I have tried to ask for help so that I can extend the place to accommodate all of them, but I am still waiting, this place is too remote and not many know of its existence.”Besides feeding and housing the children, Meme Lina’s biggest problem is finding the money to enrol them in school.”It is so saddening when you look at their little faces and there’s not much to eat, or when one of them is sick.I can hardly afford to feed the children, right now we depend on my church pastor, Pastor Paul Embeck, for his monthly food donations, and I don’t know how long the church will be helping us.”