The Namibian @40: Lea Ndahepele

LEA Ndahepele from northern Namibia came to Windhoek in 1987 upon completing Grade 10.

She enrolled at Rössing Foundation to study secretarial accounting.

A year later, she was sent to The Namibian for an internship. Ndahepele was tasked to draft invoices, sell the newspaper, as well as count and deposit the money made from sales.

She was 31 years old at the time.

Three months after completing her internship, she was called back to work as a permanent employee and was promoted to advertising consultant in the paper’s sales and advertising department.

She says she remembers a scam advertisement in the paper, involving that a member of the public got a customer to send them money for a car they advertised, but the car was never delivered.

The media and advertising landscape back then, according to her, was not as easy as it is now, because technology did not exist then.

“That time we wrote by hand, but now we have computers to process everything,” she says.

Ndahepele also worked as a photographer who travelled to weddings and other events to take pictures for the paper’s The Weekender section.

She says she enjoyed her time at The Namibian unti she retired and commended the publication for its great working environment.

“I like The Namibian, because it is a wonderful paper, and the relationship between the workers and management was very good – there was no difference,” Ndahepele says.

– Compiled by Dolly Menas

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