Namibia: Suffer Little Children
June 30, 2007
The bowels of the concrete-walled water drainage pipes running beneath the busy Mandume Ndemufayo Road in the southern industrial area of Windhoek light up every night from a low fire fuelled by plastic bags and shards of wooden planks.
A motley group of boys huddle around the flames for warmth against the bitingly cold night temperatures.
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These pipes provide shelter to about 14 or 16 boys between the ages of 11 and 19. They call it the Invisible Pipes.
Winter temperatures have fallen to between minus one degree Celsius to three degrees Celsius over the last week in the central city area, confirmed Rian van Zyl from the weather office. And another cold spell is likely to hit again next week.
The icy conditions are taking their toll on the homeless and destitute. Wintertime to these boys is synonymous with sore and stiff bodies, constant flu and wheezing chests.
“We do not have any blankets,” says Ricardo Jones, a 14-year-old runaway from Mariental.
One or two of the boys claim to have blankets that they have either stolen or were given by sympathetic members of the public.
But the others wrap themselves in plastic bags, cardboard boxes, or pieces of cloth gathered from the Game shopping mall during the day. Their mattresses are more plastic bags and cardboard boxes.
“Wintertime is a very unpleasant time of the year for us,” says Robert Benson (16). “It keeps away the sleep at night.”
“I think I will freeze to death this winter,” says Willem Frederik (19). His face is puffed up from drink and slowly-healing knife cuts criss-cross his face, and he has an open and bleeding wound on one arm “from a fight with gangsters”.
As night falls, he puts on a thin, frayed shirt over his red sweater.
And, say the boys, the City Police make their lives more difficult in winter.
“They go after us especially now. In summer they do not bother us,” said Carlos Benson.
City Police Assistant Superintendent, Marx Hipandwa, responded by saying that the children should not view this as victimization, but that they are being picked up “for their own good - irrespective of the season”.
After traversing the streets at night, the boys return to the pipes around midnight.
They then light the fire, and cook whatever food they could gather during the day from small jam cans.
“We always sit together around the fire to chat and play cards,” says Daniel Swartbooi (23). He is the assigned cook of the group.
They eat once a day - if at all.
Their staple diet consists mostly of porridge and dry bread that they get from their “sponsors”.
Or they add their pennies together that they have collected from begging or stealing, and buy special treats like sugar to add to their nightly teas.
But if they cannot find food in the day, they rummage through garbage bins for whatever scraps of food they can find.
“We scratch through the bins the whole day,” says Rudolph Afrikaner (16).
Volunteers from a local church bring them soup every Friday.
Other times they go to Klein Windhoek where they hunt birds.
“It is like eating chicken,” laughs Benson.
When they are ready to sleep, they kill the fire because of the smoke.
Another group of four boys live behind the Game shopping mall, opposite a railway line that cuts through the thinly-spread bushes.
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“This is Paradise,” says Carlos Benson (23), the oldest of the group.
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They call this place Paradise because it is close to a river from which they get sufficient water in the rainy season.
In winter, the cold creeps up to their hilltop cardboard shelter set up under a tree.
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