A young mother with her four-month old baby girl has resorted to begging in order to feed herself and her baby and to keep a roof over their heads. She sits next to the immovable rubbish bin in Wernhil Park.

She holds a can in which passers-by can place a few coins and keeps rattling it to attract the attention of shoppers. While hesitating to tell this reporter more about her dilemma, one could observe that she appears physically frail. She is 24 years old and her mother-tongue is Damara. She said she dropped out of school at primary level and has been begging since she became pregnant.
She has to find a way to ensure that her baby has milk. The youthful mother said she used to work at one of the service stations in the northern industry and she quit when she was due to give birth.
When she was asked why she has resorted to begging instead of going back to work, she claimed that her boss had instructed her to return to work two months after delivery, which she declined to do. Asked whether she is aware that the lifestyle she is living is a hazard to her baby, she replied that she is forced to beg, because she has to pay rent at the place where she lives with her boyfriend. The young woman explained that her biological mother is sickly and lives in Katutura, but she opted to leave her family home to live with her boyfriend. He sells clothes hangers at the Wernhil Park Taxi Rank. She lives in Okuryangava.
“I’m just waiting for my baby to be six months old so that I can look for a job,” she said putting on a brave smile while covering her healthy-looking baby with a blanket and helping the infant sip water from a bottle cap. There was no sign of any food parcel or a bottle of milk in her possession.
Street vendors who sell their products along the same walkway near Pep Stores have a slightly different version. They came to know the young lady and the baby a month or two ago. They suspect that she is one of four girls who are part of the street kids who lived under the Wernhil Park Bridge until they were relocated once extensive construction started in that area last year. The street kids have now moved to the Town Square area.
One of the street vendors, Kashile Kristofina, expressed sympathy with the newborn baby who is exposed to bad weather and unhygienic conditions. “I am more concerned about the innocent baby,” she said. The baby lies next to her mother on a thin baby-blanket placed on the pavement where shoppers pass.
The young mother and her baby are now wearing new clothes donated by a Good Samaritan who found them bare-footed and in rags, despite the cold weather.