The Hakahana Meat and Fish Market serves as a lifeline for thousands of families who have been lured to Windhoek through joblessness, New Era reports.
By Catherine Sasman
WINDHOEK
The morning sun throws long shadows of a throng of women as they mount a steep hill with rows upon rows of shanty houses of the Hakahana informal settlement behind them.
They carry babies on their hips or on their backs. Tied to their dresses are plastic bags and clothes. Others assist older women as they struggle along the gravel uphill path, while some walk with their umbrellas defiantly opened against the already harsh sun that beats down the treeless environment.
And then, they form themselves into two long queues in front of the Hakahana Meat and Fish Products, a one-roomed brick structure that hangs on the edge of a high ledge.
When a grey 4×4 truck approaches and comes to a screeching halt in front of the shop, the women jostle for a better place in the line and start ululating when a man jumps out and flings open the back of the truck, which is filled to the canopy roof with hairy goat and sheep heads, knuckles and offal wrapped in plastic bags.
This is a daily occurrence at the meat and fish market, rumoured to be the only one of its kind in the informal settlements along Windhoek’s northern borders.
“There is no other place like this,” says Tutsi Paulus (26) as she peers through the high counter on one side of the shop with heaps of offal that she has just weighed. “I like working here because we get so many customers every day.”
The market opened its doors three years ago when owner, Lacho Abed, recognised the need to bring services closer to the people.
“When we started this business, we cut people’s feet,” says Abed in figurative speech. “Now people do not have to take a taxi to go to a shopping centre. They get all they need from here.”
The meat and fish market is particularly popular with the locals because it is cheap.
Abed has a contract with the Brakwater Abattoir to collect goat/sheep/cow heads, offal, liver and lungs every morning.
He also sells fish from five kilogramme boxes of hake, Alfonsino, red cachuchu and horse mackarel.
“I sell at least 40 boxes at N$60 each per week,” he says. “I may expand my business because people here are already crying for sugar, oil, soup packets and paraffin.”
Deliveries go directly to the shop where often 300 to 400 people – mostly women – wait in anticipation, and business is brisk throughout from seven in the morning till seven at night.
“I have six deep freezers in the shop, but many of them are not used. People buy directly from the pick-up when we get here. People buy from us because they can make a profit from it,” says Abed. “People like to buy heads too much.”
Twenty-five-year-old Johanna Nahale has lined up in the queue since nine in the morning.
“I buy goat and sheep heads every day of the week,” she says.
She came from Ondangwa to Windhoek in 2001 in search of a job. After trying her hand at an informal sewing establishment, Nahale, who has no family in the capital, decided to sell kapana (barbecued meat) from the shanty she shares with friends.
“There was nothing to do in Ondangwa, so I came here. But I found that things are more difficult than I had originally thought,” she says while making sure that she does not lose her place in the line that has since grown longer and more impatient.
And now, as an income, Nahale buys two heads at N$10 each every day to prepare for her customers later in the day.
Also standing in the queue is Taati Iyambo (also 25) with her baby. She also comes to the shop every day to buy goat or sheep heads for the small kapana business she runs from her home.
“If I cannot buy a head, I cannot sell anything and therefore cannot make any money,” says Iyambo, who is a mother of three young children.
“This is the only way that my family can survive and struggle to keep our household together,” she says.
“I buy what my customers want,” continues Iyambo. “I prepare the kapana for them during the day, and in the afternoon when people come back from work, they always make a turn at my place.”
Another daily customer, one of the few men who gather in the queues, is Jonas Nangolo (37). Nangolo has been struggling to find a job in Windhoek for the last seven years.
“They don’t give us jobs,” he complains without qualifying who he means by ‘they’. “We are struggling here,” he says.
Nangolo decided to join the small army of women who trek to the meat and fish market daily “because I do not want to steal”, although he complains that “business is weak”.
Nangolo has first come from Ongandjera when he failed to find an income there, and has settled in Havana while he is searching for something better to do.
“My wife and four children are still in the north. I visit them from time to time, particularly during the rainy season when we plant mahango. At times my wife comes to visit me in Windhoek when I have enough money to pay for the trip down. But I have to stay here to see how I can make money; my children need food every day and I have to pay hospital bills.”
An older woman shuffles closer. Mwesha Ndjalele is 66 years old. She has come from Oshikasheka, a rural settlement on the border between Namibia and Angola to join her first born. Her husband and other children live in the north.
“I buy heads every now and then. Today I came to buy some to sell later so that I can have enough money to go to the hospital,” she says, pointing to her knees and legs that are troubling her of late.
Urban poverty – particularly in Windhoek – is growing as more and more people attempt to flee cash-strapped rural areas.
The National Labour Survey conducted in 1997, put Namibia’s unemployment rate at 34.5 percent, measuring unemployment in the rural areas at much higher than in urban centres.
However, statistics show that there is a market increase in the urban rate of unemployment, indicating that with the increase of urban population from 31.9 percent in 2002 to an expected 39.8 percent by 2015.
In addition, the developments around informal settlements around urban and semi-urban centres are already putting a strain on local and regional government’s capacity to provide needed jobs, municipal and other essential services to the urban poor.
Urban poverty in Namibia comprises largely marginalised sections of the population. This, says the Global Call Against Poverty Namibia Chapter, has been influenced largely by a huge influx of people from surrounding rural areas into the urban centres since independence.
In addition, states a shadow report by the civil society group, households headed by women constitute a significant portion of the food insecure in the country.
Although comprehensive data is limited, regional figures and the national census suggest that between 30 and 50 percent of households are effectively female-headed.
Shortage of labour is exacerbated by the higher dependency ratios present in female-headed households.
According to the 1991 census, female-headed households are comparable in size to those headed by males, but support more children. This means that while female-headed households support more dependents, they have smaller households and therefore fewer able-bodied members to assist with tasks.
And this is evident at the meat and fish market, where women still stand shoulder-to-shoulder and haggle as the goat and sheep head heap in the truck dwindle.
Simon Stefanus leans against the door at the shop watching as women squabble over the heads. “They are now fighting because there are no more heads left,” he says, squinting his eyes at the women pushing and pulling.
“I will wait for the consignment of cow heads that will come later in the day,” he says and thoughtfully.
“But I have set out at least two heads per person,” says the owner, Abed in defense.
“What am I going to do if I cannot buy heads today,” says an agitated-looking Eugenia Petrus who buys five to ten heads a day for her small business. “Does it mean that my children must go hungry tonight?”
“I am here to see to it that my customers are happy, and so should I be. This is very important,” says Abed.