2015-08-14Staff Report 2 Okando Fifty-seven-year-old Hilde Safa who harvested nothing from the last crop season after erratic rainfall is pleading with the government for more food aid. According to her, the drought relief food provided by the government is not enough. Safa, her 21-year-old daughter and a school-going grandchild, said they did benefit from the drought relief food in July. However, since the beginning of the year they have not had much to survive on. Safa says she has had no single mahangu grain to harvest and she now solely depends on the little money she gets from weaving baskets. Safa weaves three baskets monthly, which she sells for N$50 each. At times she exchanges her baskets for mahangu grain. “The little I get I use to buy my family something to eat, and soap. Some of the money I save I use to take us to hospital,” noted Safa. Her dilapidated house, situated along the road between Okalongo and Oshikuku, leaves much to be desired. From a distance the place Safa and her children call home looks like a deserted and neglected white elephant. The three huts are falling apart. “The rooms were fine during the rainy season, but they have since fallen to pieces, but what can I do? There is no grass to fix them,” she says. The 57-year-old mother of five wishes her children would come home and rescue her from the grinding poverty. Currently she only lives with her last-born daughter and the grandchild. She related that her other children deserted her and are currently somewhere in the cities. They do not visit her anymore and neither do they assist her. “It pains me so much that my children have deserted me, because I carried five pregnancies for nine months each but yet I am suffering,” said Safa. 2015-08-14Staff Report 2
