By Tuulikki Abraham
LüDERITZ – The owner of Davy’s Scrap World in Lüderitz realised the need for a soup kitchen to serve the hordes of impoverished and hungry scrap metal dealers at the town.
Elriza Le Hanie, the wife of local businessmen Davy Le Hanie explained that during their operations at the scrapyard, they received a lot of people who came to sell scrap and used their earnings to sustain their families.
That is when she came up with the idea to start a soup kitchen. Elriza and her husband Hanie opened the soup kitchen that provides free soup to the elderly, people with disability and the destitute in the town.
”This soup kitchen currently caters only for residents of the Nautilus area but we recently invited the people of Jakkalsdraai also to come to our soup kitchen. They sell metal to Davy’s Scrap World as well with the aim to buy food for their families. We currently have two volunteers in our soup kitchen, namely, Emma Beukes and Rose Kisting,” she said.
“My husband and I decided to take the little that we had and decided to open a soup kitchen at our Verenigende Gereformeerde Church here in Nautilus, in order for us to distribute food to those people who are in need,” narrated Le Hanie.
She further emphasized that she and her husband use about N$790 to buy soup ingredients and bread for the day, and N$880 per day for rice, vegetables, meat and fish.
They try to balance the varied dietary needs of these people and on Thursdays they serve soup with bread, and Tuesdays they give rice, vegetables with meat or fish.
“We started this soup kitchen on the 1st of July 2014 and the number of people keeps increasing every week,” she told a freelance journalist for New Era.
Le Hanie further stated that initially they started with 15 people but last week it had increased to 43 people.
Their aim is to expand the soup kitchen but it is unfortunate that the only funds they get are from Davy’s Scrap World, where they buy small scrap metal from the local people and bigger metal from Novanam Fishing Company, Rosh Pinah and Aus.
After buying these metals, they resell them to a metal company in Cape Town, known as SA Metal Group. Davy’s Scrap World has been in business for eight years and currently employs seven people.
“We need sponsors to expand this soup kitchen as the number of people keeps increasing every week,” said Le Hanie.
This soup kitchen was started with the aim to assist and give an extra hand to old people, people with disability and the destitute.