A group of women in northern Namibia have become ”flying mothers” for children orphaned by Aids.
They got together four years ago after losing relatives to the disease, or taking in nephews and and nieces after their parents had died.
Some of Namibia’s 47 000 Aids orphans live with elderly grandparents; others live on their own, with children as young as 12 looking after siblings.
”HIV/Aids has affected every household in the community, they’ve all buried one or two or three persons,” explains Notburga Mandune (48) at Uutapi, 850 kilometres north of Windhoek.
”Our attitude is, if you go to a household, you act as if it was yours. You guide them through the things to do, you help and teach ploughing, how to prepare the food, to fetch water, you guide the children to the principles of love.”
Says Scholastina Namakaly (46): ”In our culture it is expected that each and every one help one another. But we didn’t know when we started this that the problem would become so huge that we couldn’t handle it any more.”
”It is painful to see households so hungry.
”You tell the young about sex, they do listen, but we are not sure it changes (unsafe behaviour) … there we need the help of someone.”
Agencies such as Unicef, the UN children’s programme, are latching on to such initiatives as a way of coping with the more than 11-million Aids orphans in Africa.
Unicef is providing these women with bicycles to visit isolated households, as well as tools and seeds to distribute. – Sapa-AFP