Reitsanye: The face of poverty
Ryder Gabathuse | Friday October 17, 2014 15:25
I was touched by the reality that he had just emerged from the ground where he had slept beside his pregnant sweetheart, two years his junior. At the age of 37, Reitsanye has already resigned himself to his fate: a life of abject poverty. As he finally emerged from the rickety structure, his eyes darted all over the place as if he was searching for clues to his troubles. He did not expect any visitors that time of the day, especially newshounds. His sweetheart, Obonyemang Senkile, is heavily pregnant with their fifth child.
From a tender age to adulthood, this father of four children has never known peace. He has been fighting incessant battles against poverty and he has been a perennial loser. Now he is purely the epitome of poverty, hopelessness and emptiness.
“I grew up in this yard and there has always been nothing to write home about,” Reitsanye says about his life as he supports his lean frame over a thin Mophane tree. Chairs are a luxury that he cannot afford.
His father originated from Maun and his mother, who is of Sesarwa origin, never taught them Sesarwa leaving them to speak Setswana, which is spoken along other tribal languages in Nata. He was born in a family of eight children who are all hardest hit by poverty and are not engaged in any job except menial.
Worn out clothes hang from a rope that runs from one corner of the hut to another. Privacy in this situation is a rare commodity. Reitsanye and his traditional wife know that just everything that they do inside their hut, the person walking outside sees.
Reitsanye and Senkile’s case confirms that Botswana, a middle-income country in southern Africa, still has extreme cases of nauseating poverty where people spend days on end on empty stomachs. Reitsanye is the son of Nthome and Sebopiwa of Manakanagoree ward in Nata. This ward (Manakanagoree) like many others in Nata has extreme cases of poverty with many villagers living far below the poverty datum line.
Literally where Reitsanye and his sweetheart Senkile reside, is unfit for human habitation Theirs is a rickety makeshift matchbox hut, which is vulnerable to extreme cases of weather. Once strong winds sweep across Nata, which is often the case during the dry season, the occupants in most cases suffer the most.
When the hut was built a few years ago, materials used in construction were sourced either in the thickets nearby or from the dumping site at least to provide a roof over their heads.
Mud is peeling off from the decaying river reeds and Mophane poles that form part of the weak wall of the hut. Ventilation comes naturally with the package, as there are no windows at all. The roof is not strong enough to withstand the harsh weather. During the rainy season, it spells doom to the family as sometimes the whole structure just collapses over them.
The floor is not made up; just dusty fine and loose sand. Few valuable possessions in the hut include discoloured torn blankets, two of them rolled in a corner. There is not even a floor mat to sleep on.
The couple has improvised with cardboard boxes as their floor mat. Basically, when they retire to sleep, Reitsanye and his partner of many years now, literally sleep on the sandy floor breathing in the particles.
Hanging from a pole inside the hut is a mosquito net donated by some Good Samaritans visibly some years ago as it is already losing its original colour. Originally the mosquito net might have been blue, but weather-beaten as it is its original colour has faded. There are no utensils except for a few pots and two rusted metal cups hanging from the roof of the hut.
Nata is a malaria-infested area where those who do not heed precautions end up catching the disease or worse, dying.
Both Reitsanye and Senkile were once treated for malaria and that is why the mosquito net is a permanent feature in their hut.
There is no single toilet in the yard and as such the call of nature is heeded in the thickets nearby. “We relieve ourselves that side in the thickets in the direction of the Nata River,” he said. But, come nighttime, “we look for open spaces and relieve ourselves including in the yard”.
In his life, Reitsanye has been shuffling between cattleposts and Pandamatenga farms for menial work. Currently a farmer who originates from Zwenshambe employs him as a herdsman at a cattlepost known as Buka.
Reitsanye’s sister sleeps out in the open. A rickety structure of a traditional gazebo lies at a corner of the yard. Her bed is merely a rusty metal spring salvaged from the scene of a burnt hut. Torn and very short blankets are loosely spread out on this metal frame as if it were an area for children playing house otherwise known in vernacular as mantlwaneng.
This is the place where Reitsanye’s elder sister, Pono sleeps at night. It is just in the open. The neighbours are not worried by anything, as this is a life common here at Manakanagoree ward. In a family of six children, none has really gone to school nor was school a priority to them either. Reitsanye went up to Standard Seven before he dropped out of school. The day he left school, cows ate his uniform while hanging on a washing line.
“My teacher followed me to my dwelling place and gave me some washing powder and mealie-meal and encouraged me to return to school. The next day my return to school was dealt a death blow by a wayward friend, Babui who encouraged me to join him to go and harvest sorghum in the farms for a fee and I went,” he said. In his early life, Reitsanye and his peers survived by catching fish from the Nata River for consumption and selling the excess.
Poverty has become an ancestral problem in the family as his grandmother, Tidimalo Reitsanye, lived under similar circumstances a few years ago. The elderly Reitsanye said that a white man she only remembers as Pedro, came to her rescue a few years ago when he came with a team of volunteers and built her a two-roomed house.
Tidimalo gathered her great and grandchildren, about 11 of them, and shared her house with them. The challenge was feeding them. She may be enrolled with the government safety net, but the food she gets is not sufficient enough to support them all.
This white man apparently is Pedro Martinez, a Mexican in the Peace Corps from 2008 to 2010 in Nata and later seconded to the Men Sector NGO.
Seloma Tiro, formerly a businessman concedes that Manakanagoree ward in Nata is badly ravaged by poverty, HIV/AIDS and other social ills. “Young girls from this ward are unemployed and ravaged by poverty used to sell sex to the transit truck drivers that park in the village and in turn they were ravaged by HIV/AIDS,” said Tiro, who has since moved to Gaborone for property management and development work. He said through the Nata AIDS-Orphan Trust, which he was so passionate about, they were able to raise funds through international appeals in an endeavour to bring hope to the hopeless.
He said unemployment and lack of proper shelter suitable for human habitation ranked among the main causes of young women selling sex to truck drivers just to survive.
“Manakanagoree is infested with poverty-stricken people. I can’t say the numbers off the cuff, but I can tell you, many people there are living far below the poverty datum line,” he said, indicating that they spent days on end with no money at all to buy their needs.
“Government is doing everything to encourage and support children to go to school, but when it comes the season for harvesting thatching grass in the area, children just disappear for good,” he said, adding that some children stay away from school to harvest wild berries or land menial jobs as herdsmen.
Kgosi Rebagamang Rancholo of Nata said that a lot of villagers of the Sesarwa origin are hardest hit by poverty in the Nata-Gweta area.
“Young children break from school and many of them having not gone far with their education, can’t get paying jobs to support their families,” explained Rancholo. The high level of alcohol abuse in the village worried him.
“Basarwa families go to harvest only to come back empty-handed because they exchange the thatching grass for alcohol and food right there in the bushes,” he said.
As the village leader, Rancholo and other government officials have done their best to counsel the villagers telling them to change their ways, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears.
The chief said that the problem is not only limited to Manakanagoree as villagers in the outskirts of Nata such as Maposa, Sepako, Zoroga, Gweta, Tsokotshaaa, and Manxotae are equally hardest hit by poverty.