18 Feb 2013

Poverty is no laughing matter. Coupled with a spate of natural disasters, then things become heart wrenching if not disastrous.

With last month’s floods gone by and a spate of damage left in their trail, 31-year-old Ms Emma Hange of Nxaraga settlement tries to pick up the pieces.

Being a single mother with five kids, she is on the destitute list of the North West District Council (NWDC).

Together with her five kids, they live in a make-shift log-walled house with canvas roof and it looks more like a kraal than a place of human habitat. She found herself here in Nxaraga after having been a squatter at the recently demolished Shashe settlement in Maun.

Ms Hange indicated in an interview that she has no livelihood and depends on food rations she gets from the council every month.

“Even the shack that I consider to be our home is dilapidated. We sleep in the open and during the rainy season we get soaked,” she said.

She has given birth in these conditions and had to take care of her new born in such an environment. “That was before I got a tent and food hampers from the disaster management team,” she said.

Life according to Ms Hange has been terrible to her and she does not have a clue on know how they are still surviving.

With teary eyes, she says that all her five children have different fathers and none of them has helped her out with taking care of them.

“I have heard about single mothers who ask the courts to intervene in terms of maintenance money but I am scared to even approach them”, she says and then looks up as if she should not have said it.

He relatives are also of no help, and she does not even bother to ask for assistance from them. On services that the council is assisting her with, she wishes they could do more in terms of the school uniform they give her kids, which she alleges is given once in a blue moon.

She indicated that the poverty eradication team is forever assessing her and nothing has come out of it ever since the last assessment.

 “It seems my names are forever getting lost and I have asked to be given goats as something I would want to use to fend for myself,” she said.

All her problems and the situation at home is affecting her children’s performance at school and she notes that it is heart breaking to watch her kids struggling and not being able to do anything to help them.

The Village Development Committee (VDC) chairperson of Nxaraga Mr Jeffrey Manja said they are trying everything they can to assist Ms Hange, but due to lack of funds everything is hard for her.

“The woman needs permanent accommodation and since we do not have funds, we have not been able to assist her,” he said.

He indicated that since VDC does not have houses to rent out in Nxaraga, their cash flow is non-existent and lack of transport also hampers other government officials such as social workers in attending to such cases.

“We do not have the one vehicle per village arrangement here and such the social worker responsible for Nxaraga hardly ever comes here,” he said.

He indicates that whenever the District Commissioner (DC) visits under the auspices of the Taking Services to the people initiative, it is a one day thing and then they disappear.

“Our President visited Nxaraga last year, and issues that were raised were not shown on our local television station,” he said.

He applauded the disaster management team for responding timely to the floods that damaged people’s homes in Nxaraga.

With government’s commitment to eradicating poverty and programmes that are set up to help Batswana, Ms Hange’s hopes to be a recipient of such goodwill are still intact and the tragedy that seems to have befallen her would become a thing of the past. ENDS