Artesia Families Grapple With Poor Housing Conditions

Many residents here, more especially the youth, women and children live in abject poverty and have no place to call home. With no job and good education, many women find it hard to provide for their families. To date, there are still extended families who have for years lived in tents and tin houses that are in a bad state. These squalour living conditions can be attested to by 53-year-old Kemoitiretse Lejone, who is a mother of five and a grandmother to five children. She sahres the yard where she resides with 12 other family members. Lejone and her boyfriend stay in a corrugated room which is inhabitable. It does not have a proper door nor windows.

Even though the whole yard is clean, the family does not have sufficient accommodation to house everyone and the rest stay in a white tent which has been pitched next to the tin house. The tent was donated by the Botswana Red Cross. “We used to have two huts here. But they were destroyed by rain some years back. I don’t remember how long we stayed in a tent, but I know it is quite a number of years back,” Lejone explains their plight. “Even though I would like to build a proper brick house, I cannot afford it because I am unemployed.