TSUMEB – Eugene Reineke, a waiter at Makalani Hotel at Tsumeb, has taken it upon himself to feed scores of homeless children of the town.
The 53-year-old father of several daughters and a son uses money from tips to buy vegetables, as well as pasta to prepare soup for starving children in the Kuvukiland informal settlement of Tsumeb. “Our people are so poor that they cannot feed their own children anymore,” said Reineke. The number of meals he prepares per week or month depends on how much money he has received in tips. Although money is scarce and he has to balance the needs of his family and the needy children on a waiter’s salary, Reineke refuses to accept money from people.
“I have my own salary, when people offer money I always turn it down. I tell them to go to the shop or I accompany them and we buy the ingredients. When you take money the problems start,” he says. According to Reineke the biggest problem is firewood, water and ingredients to prepare a nutritional soup.
Reineke, also a resident of Kuvukiland, where his soup kitchen is located, believes that by feeding children they will be able to go to school and not resort to begging outside the mall. “I want to take children away from the mall and supermarkets where they are begging. Giving children money, even N$1, is not good because you are enabling and keeping those children in the street. As long as you give them money they will stay there. If you want to help, buy them food instead. They use the money you give them to buy something else,” added Reineke.
The seasoned waiter welcomes all kinds of donations and conceded that the number of children coming to the soup kitchen is growing. The children can be as few as a 100 to as many as 170. However, the numbers are climbing steadily as adults and teenagers have also started frequenting the soup kitchen queue. “Seeing the children having something to eat is all the reward I need. If those children are happy then I am also happy. If they do not eat here they will either sleep with hunger or go rummaging for food at the dumpsite,” Reineke told New Era.
By John Travolter Matali