Namibia: Heavy Rains Carry Misery

Whereas many Namibians have current the most contemporary true rains, Natalia Jonas (29) wakened with soaking moist blankets yesterday morning, after her shack was flooded on Sunday.

She is one of many residents from Otjomuise 8ste Laan in Windhoek who were left stranded after heavy rains damaged their shacks.

Jonas has been living within the home for five years.

“I actually have a three-yr-feeble exiguous one. If it starts raining within the night, we can have nowhere to head but to sleep within the water and possible drown.

“My mattress, documents… every thing is destroyed by the rain, I actually have nothing left.”

Despite impending the municipality referring to the predicament, Jonas says residents within the home have acquired no lend a hand.

“Now we have neighborhood leaders who stated the Metropolis of Windhoek knows about this but mute there isn’t any longer this form of thing as a enchancment, yr in yr out we have the same topic.”

“We slept in moist blankets on legend of we’re shut to the riverbed. We need lend a hand, perchance to be moved somewhere safer,” says Eli Ugwanga (38).

Whereas inserting her moist blankets out to dry, Ugwanga explains that folks lend a hand themselves out within the originate due to the an absence of toilets within the home, and when it rains it is miles unhealthy.

“About a of our younger of us did no longer lumber to varsity nowadays on legend of their uniforms were moist. Some of us’s documents were destroyed.”

Resident Lukas Shivaku (28) was surprised to realize dwelling and earn his shack beefy of water.

“It be no longer shapely water, it was dirty water from the streets and the total drains shut by.

“Right here is no longer wholesome for us.”

Shivaku was getting prepared for checks and was devastated at shedding his documents and textbooks.

“I came during my books floating within the water. This would possibly increasingly be dear for me to purchase the books yet again.”

For now, Shivaku must figure out how to repair his shack and replace his textbooks, whereas Johanes Heita (27) doesn’t even know what to withhold out next.

“We need to be relocated somewhere better, the build aside our issues is no longer going to be destroyed.

“About a of our belongings went with the water when it was flowing to the valley. We lost our pots, documents and other crucial issues,” Heita says.

Neighborhood chief Liu Mushongo says the predicament will certainly secure worse when it rains yet again, and there would possibly be exiguous they can carry out about it.

“The municipality knows about this, we have been reporting it for years but there’s no enchancment.”

On the opposite hand, Mushongo adds that when residents are moved by the municipality, other of us will create within the same issue.

“Final yr, residents were moved but other of us mute came to create their properties. What can I carry out now? We carry out no longer have the energy to pass of us, it be the municipality.”

The chief of emergency and catastrophe probability management at the Metropolis of Windhoek, Raymond Kapiya, says shacks in hazard zones would possibly mute be relocated.

“The emergency team assisted residents yesterday but our motive is to attach lives, lives are more mportant than property.

“They are all informal dwellers who are settled here illegally,” Kapiya says.

The municipality has been engaged in assessments to hunt down out who will also be relocated since closing yr.

“Relocation doesn’t happen in a day but that’s urged,” says Kapiya.