The unbeatable battle against poverty
Kagiso Onkatswitse | Friday October 17, 2014 15:13
These are some of the questions that have always boggled my mind as I embarked on an assignment to spend a day with a poor family in Lesirane settlement between the peri-urban areas of Mogoditshane and Gabane.
Poverty is something no one wants to be associated with. The poor often do not want to be classified as poor. It is an embarrassment of the highest order to be poor.
This is what I learnt as I searched for a poor family to interview in the streets of Gaborone, Mogoditshane and Gabane.
“We don’t want to show the world the extent of our poverty,” one person said when requested for an interview.
In Lesirane, Refilwe Gabriel, 30, allowed me to spend the whole day with her family. Refilwe stays with her three children, and her 18-year-old sister Kefentse Gabriel. Kefentse is a new mother and she is nursing her infant.
The most surprising thing is that the sisters are from Maitengwe.
But what exactly brought them to the south end of the country, I pondered. The answer is simple. The need to survive is the reason the sisters packed their belongings a few years ago and headed south of the country.
The migration for them has not been of any help; in fact it has worsened things in as far as poverty is concerned. They are unemployed after years of searching for work in Gaborone.
They share a two-roomed structure with their children. The house is not well built, rather more of a makeshift house. The rooms are each a bathroom, bedroom and the other one doubles as a kitchen and a laundry room when the weather is bad. The house has no electricity or running water.
I met Refilwe and Kefentse at around 10am. The two sisters, mothers to beautiful but unkempt children, were eager to have me in their little world. They wanted me to be part of their lives at least for one day.
How do they make ends meet on a daily basis? How do they sustain themselves and how do they sleep at home? I asked myself as I was offered a worn out bench to sit on.
There is something about the two sisters that I fail to comprehend. Despite the pain of poverty they are in, the two are welcoming and are more open about their situation.
As I move around the yard, I notice there is no ablution and stand pipe.
“You don’t have a toilet – a pit latrine toilet? How do you survive without a toilet?” I asked Refilwe.
The manner in which she answered the question was revealing. It clearly showed that though the issue of the toilet is important, it is not the most important thing to the sisters.
“Ooh that,” she laughed and said, “Our neighbour sometimes allows us to use his pit latrine. But sometimes we don’t get the permission, so most of the time we go to the nearest bush to defecate”.
On sustenance and meeting household needs, the elder sister said she sometime sells sweets.
“If we get money, usually we buy 12.5 kg of maize meal, sorghum meal and sugar. No meat,” she said frowning.
For the family meat is a luxury. It is something that is out of reach. This is how a typical dish would look like on a daily basis; soft porridge in the morning, mealie mealie or sorghum meal with beans in the evening.
“No, we normally take tea or late motogo in the morning as you have just seen. We skip lunch time so that we can cook in the evening,” she said.
The time is around 12:00 noon, we are in the middle of our interview when all of a sudden the children start crying and complaining. At first I couldn’t figure out why they were crying only to learn from Kefentse who was doing the laundry a few metres away that the children wanted food.
Kefentse stopped what she was doing, took a pot and fed the children with sorghum porridge. I later realised that the number of children Kefentse is feeding have increased. Refilwe’s two children are in school. So where are the others from? I learn from the sisters that the children are from neighbouring yards.
Despite limitations, Kefentse shared the little they had with children in the neighbourhood. It is a humbling sight. Here is a poor family with almost nothing to show, but still affords to share.
At 14:20 Kefentse told me that she was preparing to go out. Where to? I asked. Before she gives me an answer, Refilwe discloses that her sister is getting monthly food allowance from the Destitute and Social Welfare.
So Kefentse will be on her way to Gabane to receive her food ration from a local supermarket. In short Kefentse is the beneficiary of the government destitute programme. As we arrive at the supermarket, she takes out a card – something that appears more like a smart card and presents it to the shopkeeper. I guess I have been preoccupied with my Gaborone life to understand that these days the destitute are using smart cards to receive their monthly food allowance. The card reads ‘Smart Switch Botswana’, on the other side, it says, ‘Be smart switch to Smart Switch Botswana’. With this card, Kefentse can get P500 worth of food items every month from the Gabane supermarket.
When she handed the card to the shopkeeper for processing, Kefentse suddenly appeared tense. She held her few months old toddller tightly to her chest. She was clearly- nervous. She was hoping to get food that day otherwise she would have to return another day.
The shopkeeper inserts the card in the machine, and immediately it declines. It was October 7, 2014, and the government had not yet credited her card with funds to allow her to get the food items. Kefentse was clearly disappointed but not angry – she did not throw a tantrum. As we return to Lesirane, I ask her: “Is this what you experience every month after spending so much on public transport?” She said: “Sometimes we get food very late, sometime it’s exactly after month-end.”
This is how the Gabriels live. Every day is a struggle. Every day has its own challenges. They wish things were a little bit different, but they are not. Still they remain hopeful. Hopeful for employment and a better life, but in the meantime, the family is trying to figure out how to break away from the manacles of poverty.