Poverty

Recently I was asked by someone from the states to try to gauge/quantify the kind of poverty I am around and so I will try to do that. One must understand that in Namibia there are some pretty distinct differences in how the people live depending on where you are in the country so my thoughts are mainly confined to what I have seen in the South and in Windhoek, the capital. Talking to other volunteers it seems that life is quite different in the North, in the Kavango region, and with the Himba people.

            I think that it is really hard sometimes to see a lot of the poverty here, especially if you don’t want to see it. The reason, like most things in the south, stems from the Apartheid period. During that time Black, Coloreds and Whites all lived in separate areas. The whites lived in what is known as “town” and the black and coloreds lived in “locations” (also known as townships), and the locations weren’t just on the other side of the tracks but a mile down the road and then on the bad side of the tracks. Thus, if you are driving into any town you might see a settlement off in the distance but you cant really see the conditions there. Also, the way things were planned, you really aren’t going to happen upon a location since they were purpose built and, at least in my experience, there is generally only one main road in and out.

            Now, fast forward 17 years since independence and most blacks still live in locations, not because they are forced to live there, but because that is where the community is in many ways. Also, during apartheid you had government built housing in the locations and sever restrictions on people being able to build shacks. Now, you have large informal locations that have grown around the formal planned location. These informal settlements are basically shacks built out of scrap metal and have basically no services. These settlements have grown as there are little to no restrictions on them now, and as more people leave the more rural areas. But I also think that the poverty doesn’t overwhelm us since there is decent infrastructure/development and the real poverty is in many ways hidden.

            Specifically in my pseudo village rural area there is poverty but no one that is truly destitute, at least not that I see, and I think for the most part people are contented with how they live. There is just an acceptance of how things are and little thought of changing things. Again, I think this attitude can be directly traced to the legacy of apartheid. This attitude of “acceptance” permeates everything and if you don’t realize that it is a product of the sever racism and repression one can have some very negative thoughts about the people.

             The people who are truly destitute in this society are the San/Bushmen. These are the original inhabitants, or at least the people that have lived here the longest, and they have been persecuted by basically every group of people that have come since. (The other main groups of blacks, Ovambos, Hereros, Damara, and Nama all came around the 1300-1500s). In their natural state the San are a nomadic people who own basically nothing and live off the land/wildlife. Of course now much of the wildlife is gone or on private reserves and after being oppressed for hundreds of years there are very few San who live a “traditional” lifestyle. So when one sees beggars and those living extremely poor they are almost always San.