Mural painted by Deon Kous, Drimiopsis resident & former student of CSN’s Theresa Matengu.
Our CSNS Board is thrilled with the great progress you and our other donors have helped us achieve this past year! In 2020, with your help, and the generosity of an anonymous donor who matched donations received to $10,000, we sent $34,000 to our sister charity, Children’s Sanctuary Namibia or CSN.
A portion of the Mother House, a future home for 18 orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC).
With it, CSN has nearly completed the construction of the Mother House, a future home for 18 orphaned and vulnerable children. During the past year, separate showers, sinks and toilets for boys and girls were added to the building, sewage tanks and laundry facilities were installed. All of these were made possible by the drilling of a well and the installation of two water tanks plus the frames to support them. We are so grateful that water was found on the sanctuary property, since a reliable source of water for the Mother House, its garden and property, is a vital necessity that sustains all other initiatives.
A portion of the fencing erected around the 4.5 hectare site.
The completion of the ceilings and installation of floor tiles is underway. A fence around the entire perimeter of the 4.5-hectare Sanctuary property was completed. With the reliable water supply found last year, the gardens were expanded to include indigenous species, ornamentals and a wider variety of fruits and vegetables, paving the way for future self-sustainability.
A portion of the gardens on site.
Funds raised in 2020 paid the salaries of three fulltime staff - a security guard, a gardener/handyman and a gardener’s assistant.
These funds also provided food and salaries for part time workers erecting the building.
CSNS paid the wages for two housekeepers--Chief Ita and her assistant Victoria who supervise 9 soup kitchen volunteers and oversee the wellbeing of the children served.
Most importantly, our donations kept the food programs going. These include feeding 44 kindergarten children 2 meals a day, 5 days a week, plus the soup kitchen meals that are provided 3 times per week, serve an average of 112 orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) at each meal, and sometimes many more due to hardships related to covid-19.
Zuma, Handyman/Gardener serving children attending soup kitchen.
Volunteers serving children a soup kitchen meal.
These are wonderful steps towards achieving our vision, which is to create true sanctuary for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) where their needs for belonging, nurturing, learning and love can all be met.
For you to appreciate how far we have come in the seven years since our sister charity CSN started and the two years since CSNS became a Canadian registered charity, I would like to tell you a bit about the community we help and why it needs support from people half a world away. It is a story that reveals both the strengths and frailties of human nature and what is required to build on these strengths.
The story begins in 1991 when the Namibian government took a San community of 200 families and relocated them from their ancestral lands to a resettlement camp created for them, called Drimiopsis. Prior to being relocated, the San lived a self-sufficient hunter-gatherer lifestyle and practised their culture and traditions which were inextricably interwoven with the natural world. It was not their decision to move. The government’s stated reason for moving them was “to settle them into a more economically viable sector of society”. It could be argued that the actual reason was to free more land for cattle ranching.
Drimiopsis Resettlement Camp is 45 km north of Gobabis, the nearest town. There is no public transportation or medical facilities.
In fact, rather than being a doorway to economic integration, the resettlement camp is situated 45 km north of the nearest town, Gobabis, with no public transport, no local health services, and most important, no way of making a living. It is surrounded by cattle ranches.
People in Drimiopsis are dependent on the government which supplies a monthly pension for seniors of about $130 CAD. This is given to both San seniors and those of other tribes who have moved to Drimiopsis. Parents and guardians can receive a grant of $25 CAD per month to support an orphan or vulnerable child, but many do not receive it since they do not have the necessary documents (either the parents’ identity document or a birth certificate).
The outcomes are predictable, as they would be for any group of people similarly relocated. Except for a tiny minority who found employment in the local cattle ranches and thus were able to feed their families, most live in despair and hopelessness. Because of the absence of ways to make a living, men are the hardest hit. They cannot provide for their loved ones in traditional ways nor in contemporary ways because the former was possible only in relationship to land which is no longer available and the latter to jobs and access to jobs which also are not available.
Despair makes people vulnerable to alcohol and drugs, a form of escape from an intolerable life without purpose. Because women still have the important job of producing and raising children, their lives have more meaning. But many are still drawn into alcohol abuse. Everyone in the community suffers from the effects of alcoholism and the entry of HIV/AIDS into Drimiopsis. Namibia has one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates, currently about 12% of the population, down from 18% seven years ago.
The entire community suffers from malnutrition, subsisting on a diet of mealie porridge severely lacking in protein, vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients. I don’t have to tell you how this impacts health at every age and stage of life, especially over three generations.
This is the context in which one person, a teacher in the local residential high school that serves district teens, was moved to make a difference. Her name is Theresa Matengu. In 2013, Theresa, with the support of her husband and sister, who donated a large cooking pot, began feeding the most vulnerable children from her home kitchen on the school grounds. Theresa had been doing this for some months when our dear friend Helge Mercker heard of her and went to meet her.
CSN founders Theresa Matengu (right) and Helge Mercker, on the Sanctuary Land in 2019.
They instantly connected and began working together with the elected chief of the San people, Ita Kambases, mother, grandmother, problem solver, natural helper. Helge’s father Hanse, who at the time owned a cattle ranch 17 km from Drimiopsis, came to the community and built a simple outdoor kitchen.
Chief Ita Kambases with Helge in the soup kitchen built by Hanse Mercker.
Soup kitchen - early days. Chief Ita with volunteers who continue to serve.
Helge appealed to her networks in Germany, Namibia, the US and Canada for help. Amongst her early supporters were Al and Jeanne Fike of Gibsons, BC Canada and Geoff Cutler from Sydney Australia who had met Helge at a prayer retreat at the Fike’s home in 2012. Later they all went to visit her in Namibia in 2014. That was the year CSN received charitable status from the Namibian government which donated 4.5 hectares of land in the resettlement camp of Drimiopsis to establish a sanctuary for OVC.
From left to right, Al Fike, Jeanne Fike, Geoff Cutler and Helge Mercker in rear.
In April 2017, I visited Namibia and upon returning, set in motion the process for creating a sister charity to CSN. It was clear to me that the San people have tremendous human potential, and that an ally from the so-called developed world partnering with CSN to help meet the San’s basic human needs was a necessary first step towards actualizing their potential. In April 2018, we were granted charitable status by CRA. In August 2019, three other board members, Betty, Judy and Diane, visited Drimiopsis as well.
From left to right, supporters Kevin O’Neill, Theresa Matengu, Terry Adler, Marion Hordjik and Arie Hordjik (rear).
CSNS Board Members Betty Owen, Diane Mawson & Judy Dunbar serving children a soup kitchen meal, August 2019.
As we approach International Women’s Day, I want to acknowledge how the burden of care in the 30 devastating years since the San were relocated to Drimiopsis has fallen upon women. In the survey conducted by Helge Mercker in 2013, 92% of the household respondents were female, 8% were male. Absenteeism of males has become common as they either work out of the community, move away to seek work, are imprisoned or have died.
The survey further revealed that in 66% of the homes, for every one of their own children, caregivers were looking after two additional non-biological children. The number of orphans continues to increase due to HIV/AIDS, poverty, TB, cancer and accidents. The number of vulnerable children continues to rise due to HIV/AIDS, poverty, deaths, unemployment and TB.
Death and loss are so much a part of this community’s life. It falls primarily to mothers, grandmothers, aunts and older female children to support children in the grief process and indeed support them in nearly every way. CSN, and we as their partner charity, have created an avenue for hope in the community, a grassroots project working with local women and men that builds upon the great strengths inherent in the San people and their culture that goes beyond survival to a place where their children can thrive.
In the past two years, the generosity of our donors, the hard work and creativity of our board members, have enabled us to send CSN the resources to build the sanctuary and the infrastructure to sustain it, as well as to continue the food programs at the kindergarten and soup kitchen. The building process has provided jobs, temporary and permanent, for a small number of men and women in the community. Our fund raising has permitted CSN to offer modest honoraria to the wonderful and committed women volunteers, most of whom have been involved from the start of the soup kitchen.
The building of the sanctuary and feeding of their most vulnerable citizens has become a source of hope for the community, tangible evidence that they are not alone, that positive change can happen, and they can be part of it, and that more is to come.
CSNS Board Members Judy Dunbar, Betty Owen, Diane Mawson, Terry Adler & Helge Mercker (rear) receiving a cheque from Canyon Heights school in North Vancouver, BC during a school presentation.
Moving forward, in 2021 CSNS is committed to providing necessary funds to CSN to cover the annual operational expenses of the Sanctuary. This entails providing funds for the soup kitchen and kindergarten food programs, paying salaries for 5 people, providing honoraria to 11 volunteers, and maintaining the garden.
Chief Ita with the soup kitchen volunteers and visiting CSNS board members in back row.
Jeremiah Molestane, CSN President with wife Lydia (CSN board member & Kindergarten teacher) in front of the Sanveld Kindergarten.
This year, CSN in cooperation with Namibian Child Welfare, anticipates 18 orphans (9 boys & 9 girls) will be moved permanently into the Mother House. To accomplish this, CSN needs to complete the electrical needs for the site and to train two local women to be house mothers. Funds are needed to cover the costs of the power source (e.g. solar panels), training costs for two local women who will take up residence in the Mother House, plus supplying the house with furniture, bedding, utensils and other needed equipment. Thus, our fundraising goals this year will be approximately $35,000.
OVC Children playing on the Sanctuary Land after receiving a soup kitchen meal.
We are grateful and honoured to be a part of this continuing process of community development in Drimiopsis Namibia, a process that started with one woman opening her heart, joined by another, and now, by many others. Thank you for contributing to putting love into action in these ways! You are helping transform lives!
“Thank you donors for your love…..”. Poster created and displayed by Deon Kous.