‘Andara is my home’

IT is not every day that one leaves behind their life to selflessly serve others, but Barbara Müller, a Swiss native, decided to trade her life in Europe to settle in a village in Namibia.

Müller’s face has become a beacon of hope for the children of Andara and surrounds in the Kavango East region.

She has built six kindergartens and set up water infrastructure covering some 23 kilometres in a matter of a few months.

She also helps facilitate the transfer of medical skills between local and international doctors at Andara, Rundu and Grootfontein state hospitals.

“These people have no water, no food and no proper shelter, but today, we are here to build a family a house,” she said when The Namibian recently visited her at the village.

Müller’s journey to philanthropy started in 2014 while on her annual tour of the African continent, when her daughter fell seriously ill in Namibia at a resort close to Andara.

She had to be rushed to the nearest medical facility, which was the Andara Roman Catholic Hospital.

“My daughter was admitted at Andara hospital, and it was a very uncomfortable moment in my life,” Mueller says.

She says when her daughter was discharged, one of the doctors who had attended to her, took her (Müller) aside and said: “We need to do something together.”

“I asked the doctor what I should do, and he told me to think and come back,” she says.

Müller returned home with a new calling: to serve and uplift the communities she fell in love with while travelling.

She was born and bred in Bern, Switzerland, and worked as a sales manager at a pharmaceutical company until this year, when she resigned to pursue charitable work on a full-time basis.

Müller says she initially tried to lead both a European and African life by spending two months a year in Namibia and the rest in Switzerland.

“The two lifestyles were too different and I couldn’t cope trying to balance the disparities between the two. It was more hurting, and I had to choose which lifestyle I wanted more,” she says.

Müller says there are certain things she cannot get used to, like her feet always getting dusty as a result of Namibia’s sandy roads.

She misses Swiss chocolate and cheese, she says.

“I have discovered you do not need a lot to live through this life, and I have found it so baffling that although poverty is so prevalent in rural Namibia, the people are still very happy. That is why I fell in love with Africa,” she says.

Although her work is rewarding, Müller says it can be mentally taxing.

“If you plan on doing this kind of work, always remember to have time for yourself, to relax the mind. This will allow you to enjoy your work and will thus enable more work to be done in the process,” she says.

Müller says getting sufficient funding for her projects is a challenge.

Her projects are currently sponsored by private European companies.

She says since moving to Africa and being unemployed, she has had to make adjustments to her lifestyle and has to make do with her monthly stipend from her non-governmental organisation (NGO), called Mudiro.

“With that allowance I have made calculations that I can survive in Africa for about a year, and then I need to make a plan,” Müller says.

“That is how I survive and how Mudiro survives, but it is a tough job. It would really be nice if we got two or three big sponsors that would allow us to do more,” she says.

Thivute Maghongo (18), a beneficiary of one of the projects, says he is glad there are people like Müller in the world.

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