‘If only there was water’

“It would have been different. But there is no water!” Magdalena Tsamases lamented as she helplessly watched her mother and nephew being reduced to ashes in the shack. “My Lord, you know my mothers end …”

The only thing that would kill the blaze is water. But in this small settlement, water is scarce.

On that fateful Friday, Ouma Theresia Tsamases (88) wore her new dress, a green and white gown, and Magdalena was puzzled that her mother was all dressed up with nowhere to go.

“I told her to go put on her old clothes. But she said its a dress like any other. There is nothing special about it,” Magdalena remembers. This would be the last dress Ouma wore as she burnt to death later that night.

Ouma Theresia was a stubborn, but determined old lady.

Magdalena has been living at Okombahe for a while now, looking after her.

“She was diagnosed with high blood pressure, but she stopped taking the medication years ago,” Magdalena says.

Ouma Theresia religiously got up at 04h00 every morning, she says.

She lived with her three-year-old grandson in the two-room shack.

That evening, Magdalena prepared dinner, rice and boerewors, not knowing it would be their last supper together.

Ouma did not eat the food, but took the plate with her to her shack.

“She went to feed the children at home,” Magdalena says.

Their last conversation was about her two nieces who are said to have too many male friends who frequently visit at ungodly hours.

Ouma Theresia has been complaining about the matter for weeks.

To put her at ease, her teenage grandson promised to arrange for Ouma to visit relatives at Swakopmund.

“But she refused … That day everything happened,” Magdalena says.

Ouma Theresia and her grandson Benhard Khaniseb (3) died on Friday night in a shack fire at the Okombahe settlement.

Little could be done to rescue them.

There was no water to put the fire out as the settlements main water supply is being repaired.

The cause of the fire is still being investigated by the Erongo police.