Namibia Part 3

Life in the slums of Epako

The first few times that we went into the slums of Gobabis, Epako was with Judith and I was not as shocked as I thought I would be. Maybe this was because in the South East of Turkey I had seen comparable living situations, or maybe it was because I didn’t fully realize or understood it yet.

By now, about 2,5 weeks later, all that has changed. I will not be able to tell you what goes through your mind when you start realizing and seeing the facts of life around here. The diversity of rich and poor and the extremity of wealth and poverty.

In the township Epako, most people here have nothing. Unborn babies are found on the streets, people live in small self made houses made of plastic and other garbage materials and quite often they live in them with over 20 people. In these situations most people get very sick. Apart from AIDS there is also a quite high level of Polio, Cholera and for example TBC. All of which there is no good treatment for in this area (and no money).

‘They burry us in plastic’

In winter – which in Namibia is right now – it gets very cold at night. Most people do not have enough blankets to keep themselves warm and there is a lack of water and food. To keep themselves warm and their stomachs full, people start drinking alcohol at a very young age. There are breweries called ‘Tombo houses’ in the slums of Epako (very dangerous to go there on your own…) where an alcohol called ‘tombo’ and ‘kaalgat’ are made.

A woman in Epako told us the people get this alcohol mostly in exchange for sex, which most of the time happens unsafely. Many people carry diseases and spread them by having unsafe sex. This Tombo drink is made from bodyparts, rust and animal parts, to make it even stronger (and for sometimes for voodoo rituals and superstition). People die from it on day to day basis.

This woman that told us about all this was pregnant herself and that their are no good toilets in Epako, so people do their business in the streets and/or in the bushes. At night, she told us, women are afraid to go out to go into the bushes because they’ll get raped or even worse. Lots of people are sick and have diarea, but they are unable to walk so they leave everything in their own houses. More diseases spread this way and when people get burried they don’t get a normal coffin but just a shallow grave, a small ditch in the grownd while they are wrapped in plastic, according to a man we spoke to.

Prison

To make things even worse, several street kids were arrested for stealing food and shoes. These kids were once involved in a project called ‘Ubuntu’ that originated in Holland. I’ll write more about this in another blog soon, ever since this might be a part of our film as well. In the end – with a lot of help from Thea and Albert – they were able to set them free. One of the kids was beaten up pretty bad in prison and all of his belongings were stolen from him. These kids were able to go back to the place where Ubuntu took place, with a guy named Ben, but a lot of other children have no place to go so they will only get arrested again for sniffing petrol to get into a halucinative state or for stealing or sometimes even rape. What shocked me the most was that arrested children get raped and beaten up in prison by other inmates, but almost all the children actually prefer that, because at least this way they have a roof over their heads and are able to get some food to stay alive. It’s sad, because the only reason they get involved in criminal activities is because they want to survive…They all live day by day.

Hope

However, not all is bad. A lot of projects are initiated by the municipality of Smallingerland when they started a twinning with the municipality of Gobabis. A fellowship, a connection was made between both municipalities to make this world a better place.

And they are working hard on this! There are also individual project running in Gobabis, such as Ubuntu, for the same purpose. Another project is ‘Early Childhood Development’ which one are better education on pre-schools. During our first two weeks we visited a lot of pre-schools where Judith asked the teachers questions for Smallingerland and hadned out flyers. She asked questions about how their school system works, where they get money from (if there is some) et cetera and with this information they will see if these schools can get help from Smallingerland, to help as many vulnerable children as possible in Gobabis, to give them a better future then for example the ones mentioned above.

Surprised

The second thing that surprised me in the slums – after realising how the people actually have to live – is the never ending positive perspective by most people I have come across so far. They have hope in their hearts and minds, in despite of everything that is going on. They are friendly and more or less even happy. They live by the day. What I really want to do with this film is give these people a voice of their own. A voice to the voiceless!

I’ll get more detailed about all of these subjects in upcoming posts, but for now this is sort of an introduction and my first impressions – they can obviously change as time passes. Have a look at the pictures that I took – mostly portraits from the slums in the township Epako and at some of the pre-schools that we visited there.

In the upcoming blog I’ll start writing about the film production fase as well.