Wake Up, Namibia: Your Children are Swallowing Dangerous Substances

Recently, Namibia failed in the Olympics, failed in drafting meaningful manifestos, and now we’re even failing at smuggling drugs, too.

I don’t get why nobody in this place can do anything right. It’s as if we’ve never heard the idea of doing the right things the right way.

I mean, seriously, smuggling drugs? This is a whole new level of incompetence for our small nation. We’ve managed to screw up everything else so far, and there was almost nothing left to mess up any more.

Now it appears we can’t even excel at illegal activities. It’s like we’ve hired a team of amateurs to run everything from public service delivery to black-market operations.

Oh, I almost forgot to give you the background to this whole mess. You see, just the other day, an incident involving a Namibian woman and drugs at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg left the nation in a state of shock and awe.

As it turns out, a beautiful Namibian traveller, allegedly, decided to take her love of swallowing to a whole new level by swallowing a collection of balloons filled with illicit substances.

Before we dive into the comedy here, let’s rather take a moment to appreciate the sheer audacity of this woman.

To think she could swallow balloons filled with dangerous drugs knowing very well they could burst and kill her took a passage out of the book ‘Where Others Wavered’.

While it tells a story about her swallowing prowess, it certainly shows her level of courage and determination to secure the bag.

I saw the pictures from the news outlets and the X-ray image looked more like a human-sized gumball machine, only with a decidedly more illegal and dangerous twist.

Remember when we were so good at cricket? We used to beat everyone, and I mean everyone. But now, we can’t even qualify for the World Cup.

Didn’t we send a team to Phala Phala for a mission that also ended badly? Aren’t we the country with a failed Fishrot scheme? Whether it’s inside our borders or some international frontiers, we suck.

This is a national disgrace deserving of a state-sponsored study on ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of Namibians in both Legal and Illegal Enterprises’.

All of a sudden, we are looking at every social media account of every slay queen and want to ask questions like “mbuae panga, show us your X-ray image, we have seen the swimming costume already”.

But hey, at least we’re consistent. We’re always finding new ways to disappoint ourselves.

Of course, the humour in this situation is rather bittersweet as this is someone’s daughter and sister.

After all, she is innocent until proven guilty because some of these smugglers get beaten, abused and sometimes blackmailed into carrying out these acts.

This is a real human being in a tight situation, and all of you who laughed will go to hell.

While it’s easy to laugh at the absurdity of this incident, we must also recognise the underlying tragedy that is the poverty that drove her into the hands of criminals.

This woman, like many others, was likely driven by desperation.

The fact that she felt the need to risk her life and freedom for a quick buck is a stark reminder of the challenges facing many Namibians in silence.

By the way, we have many men and women chilling in prisons across the world right now, especially in Brazil, for drug trafficking, while others have done their time and are home grinding.

My tears roll down my face every time I think about how this country shuns those who leave for greener pastures while calling them deserters.

It’s time for Namibia to wake up and smell the coffee before we lose more of our young people to the streets locally and to criminals and prisons across the world.

This means investing in education, healthcare and economic development, giving our citizens a fair shot at living fulfilling lives, without having to resort to dangerous or illegal paths such as our sister’s fate.

Sure, it’s okay to giggle at life’s oddities, but don’t get too comfortable, wipe that grin off quickly.

If we really want to protect our children, we have to commit to the right actions and make sure we’re doing them the right way.