My First Counterpart

Last Monday a man named Benedictus came into my office to ask for assistance in his efforts to help young boys living on the streets who were formerly in prisons. I learned that Ben has been working with these boys since 2002. For the past five years, he has solicited ministries and other organizations for support but unfortunately, nobody was willing to help him. So he was rather dejected when he came into my office on Monday. We had never met before and I had never heard his name mentioned around the water cooler (we don’t really have a water cooler by the way, that’s just an expression J). However, in spite of the fact that we were not acquainted with one another, we both immediately recognized in each other a shared determination to help this community.

Ben asked me to help him draft a letter to a local pre-school in order to secure meeting space for his discussions with the street children. After he explained what his goals were, I sat down and typed out a letter for him. With tears in his eyes, he expressed his gratitude for my simple gesture and informed me that he has visited all the ministry offices in Gobabis over the past few weeks but nobody would take ten minutes to sit with him and help him draft a letter. Frankly, I was not all that surprised that none of the ministry workers were willing to help him. Sadly, it seems that most of the ministry workers rarely complete their own tasks and thus, would be extremely disinclined to assist someone else with his work. In fact, my supervisor had even refused to help Ben the previous week when he came into the office (I was out visiting the hospital then and did not meet him that day). Hence Ben was extremely surprised that I was so willing to assist him last Monday. I really don’t think that he understands how desperate I have been to begin my work here in the community or how long I have searched for a friendly face in Gobabis. I’m honestly not sure which one of us appreciates the other more.

So Ben has become my first counterpart (a term PC uses to identify the community members who work with PCVs on various projects) and we are working together on the issue of child justice. He and I have met a few times since last Monday. We are hoping to begin a life skills program for the young ex-offenders living on the streets. Currently, the boys are destitute and thus, likely to be imprisoned again as they are forced to steal in order to survive. He wants to encourage them to make an honest living so we are brainstorming small income-generation projects to initiate with them. We have yet to tackle the funding issue but I’m taking things one step at a time.

Ben has also been conducting cell visits at the local prison which I hope to accompany him on someday soon. The purpose of the visits is to inspect the quality of the cells in which youth offenders are placed. In Namibia, there are no juvenile detention centers so underage offenders are imprisoned with older, seasoned criminals which often leads to physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Additionally, most of the children are denied access to an attorney, many of their families are not contacted upon their arrest, and some of the cells lack proper toilet facilities. By documenting the unethical conditions at the prison, we hope to pressure the regional government into changing its policies in order to uphold the rights of the children. Ensuring child justice, incidentally, is one of the charges of the Ministry of Youth. Unfortunately it seems that the issue has not been addressed since the departure of the last PCV so I am hoping to put it on the agenda again.