Namibia's Children

Contents What is this about? An Overview �� 7 The most important findings ��8 Orphans and vulnerable children – who do we mean? �� 15 I. Children of the Crisis – Living Conditions in Namibia �� 25 A simple life �� 25 Writing about Africa? Postcolonial hesitancy ��31 Hileni: a voice from Katutura �� 37 Namibia: a post-war society? �� 46 The war generation and its children �� 51 Transformations with catastrophic consequences �� 54 Orphans and vulnerable children: the experiences of children �� 59 Excursus: children’s rights �� 63 II. Children in Rural Areas �� 69 Egumbo: The situation of children in rural areas �� 69 Observations and experiences of a principal �� 82 Children write about themselves �� 85 Linea and her children �� 93 Child labour, rural culture, and its devaluation by schools �� 98 The market, the garbage, the millet� Three zones in an African city� Three lifestyles of children �� 102 From: Michaela Fink, Reimer Gronemeyer Namibia’s Children Living Conditions and Life Forces in a Society in Crisis April 2021, 196 p., pb., 1 b&w ill., 19 col. ill. 35,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5667-1 E-Book: PDF: 34,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5667-5 Many children in Namibia find themselves facing a social crisis. They have been abandoned or abused, are malnourished, homeless, or live in shacks that barely provide any protection. However, amidst these disastrous living conditions, children have developed remarkable survival skills, and come up with equally clever and disillusioned analyses of their situation. For three years, Michaela Fink and Reimer Gronemeyer conducted interviews in Na- mibia with women who take care of vulnerable children. The book gives these children a voice in interviews and essays. Michaela Fink (Dr. phil.), born 1973, is a research associate at the Institute of Sociology at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Her work and research focuses on end-of-life care, volunteering and dementia, as well as studies on sub-Saharan Africa. She completed her doctorate in 2011 on the subject of the institutionalisation of dying in hospice work and palliative care, works in various research projects on the topic of voluntary end- of-life care and was involved in the establishment and management of the outpatient children’s hospice service in Gießen (2006-2012). Reimer Gronemeyer, born in 1939, holds a Ph.D. in theology and in sociology. He is a Prof. em. at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, honorary senator of the University of Giessen, and has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Tansania, Namibia, Bo- tswana, and Malawi. He is the chairperson of the German NGO »Pallium – Research and Aid for Social Projects«. For further information: www.transcript-verlag.de/en/978-3-8376-5667-1 © 2021 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld III. Children in Urban Katutura �� 109 Kabashu: The situation of children in Silvertown �� 109 Her name is actually Ottilie �� 115 Once again: the voices of children �� 116 Excursus: The very last desert� Children graves ��125 IV. The New Civil Society Places – Refuges for Children in Need ��127 Civil society initiatives: an overview ��127 Lucia: a lively woman and her fosterlings �� 135 The bushman �� 141 Lucia’s plot and her egumbo ��142 Lucia’s daughter C� �� 144 Abandoned children: Agatha and the Baby Haven �� 145 Children in poverty: Frieda and the Havana Soup Kitchen �� 153 Homeless children: Rosa and the Dolam Children’s Home �� 156 Infants and HIV-positive mothers: Mount Sinai Center ��162 Excursus: On the colonial history of orphanages in Namibia �� 165 Conclusion: African Children. European Childhoods �� 169 Living in societies of plenty� Surviving in societies of dearth �� 169 How do children experience the human condition? Approaches to an overdue cultural comparison �� 171 Appendix ��179 The research project ��179 Acknowledgements �� 180 Bibliography �� 181 What is this about? An Overview Many children in Namibia find themselves right in the centre of a social crisis. They have been abandoned, abused, are malnourished, homeless, or live in shacks that barely provide any protection. The sur- prising thing revealed in many talks with such children: Amidst these disastrous living conditions children develop remarkable survival skills, a strong will to live, and come up with equally clever and disillusioned analyses of their situation. It is mostly Namibian women who, in many different initiatives, build refuges for these children. These new environments are both saving and promising for the future in a society where traditional social cohesion (families, neighbourhoods, rural environments) are disintegrating. For three years, the authors of this book conducted interviews in Namibia with women (and some men) who take care of vulnerable children. In interviews and essays these children were also able to voice their views. The field work took place within the context of a three-year -re search project funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Throughout the interviews, from the first to the last of over one hundred, the confident vitality of the children was palpable. The women who have started soup kitchens, orphanages, kindergartens, and other initiatives, are people who, alongside the official national institutions, are creating a civic society, which acts locally, personally, unbureacratically, and with a lot of empathy. The authors come from a brief analysis of the political and social situation in Namibia. The country which in 1990 (as the last country on the African continent) gained independence is full of contradictions. Rich in resources, peaceful despite its many ethnicities (and ethnic 8 Namibia‘s Children differences), with a free press, democratic elections, and a small ba- sic state pension for old people, Namibia seems like an African model country. At the same time, Namibia is one of the countries where social inequality is most pronounced. Unemployment, alcoholism, and cor- ruption characterise the daily life. The situation of children in particu- lar has been deteriorating for years.1 This book is based on fieldwork from two Namibian hotspots: On the one hand, in the smallholder agriculture region Oshana in the former Ovamboland. There, the characteristic local form of settlement, egumbo, is in crisis: Men have mostly abandoned the region to find work in the south. Traditional farming – not least because of cli- mate change – is getting increasingly difficult. On the other hand, in urban Katutura: the Black, in many cases in- formal settlement area of people who come from the rural areas to the urban region of Windhoek. Katutura, with its estimated several hundred thousand inhabitants, is already larger than the »old« »White« Windhoek. The most important findings In a 2011 report, UNICEF puts the number of OVC (orphans and vulnerable children) in Namibia at 250,000 (this equates to 26 per cent of all children and adolescents below the age of 18).2 The 2011 population census states that a national average 13 per cent of all children and adolescents below the age of 18 were either half-orphans or full orphans (full orphans making up 2,7 per cent). The majority of orphans lost one or both of their parents as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Most orphans, in absolute numbers as well as in relative numbers to the high population density, lived in the rural regions in Namibia’s North. In absolute numbers, out of 124,320 half-orphans and orphans 35,785 1 Cf. the Human Development Report 2013: 99; Melber 2015a. 2 UNIFEF 2011: 6. What is this about? An Overview 9 lived in urban and 88,535 in rural regions.3 Meanwhile, the findings of the interviews indicate that the situation is substantially more ag- gravated than what the official statistics show. For instance, a school principal in a village near Ondangwa reports that out of 365 pupils 120 are half-orphans or full orphans (roughly 33 per cent).4 Not only the number of orphans but also the number of OVC in total is highest in the northern regions (Ohangwena 33 per cent, Caprivi 42 per cent, Omu- sati 34 per cent, Oshikoto 32 per cent,

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