Losing both parents days apart

MAVEYA Ndjavera (23), the daughter of much-loved actor and drama lecturer David Ndjavera (51), has shared her agony over losing both her parents within days with .

Her mother, Helena Ndjavera (50), who has been a qualified nurse for 25 years, succumbed to Covid-19 four days before her husband, who passed away early yesterday morning.

“Losing two parents in a matter of days is very, very hard. We are still mourning my mother, and our dad helped us during those days, and now he is gone.

“This is just not fair. It’s very hard. I have to be strong for the family. The good thing is that my father taught me how to fight and stand up for myself. Now I have to stand for my siblings and grandmother,” Maveya says.

She says her parents were married for 30 years.

“Mom and Dad were very close, and that’s why I feel they followed each other. Dad was shattered by Mom’s passing.

“Both were people’s persons. I would say my mother was a mother to everyone. She was just a wonderful angel and had an open heart.

“My dad was also a father to all of us. He was hard-working. He started as a newspaper boy, and holidays he would do some security work just to make extra cash.

“He worked so hard, and when he passed, he was a lecturer. I’m very proud and look up to him. He was a good father,” Maveya says.

“My mother was busy building a clinic at Epukiro out of her own pocket, to help farmworkers and their children.”

According to the family, Ndjavera was struggling to breathe and had Covid-19 symptoms.

His long-time friend Lucky Peters says Ndjavera called him at around 04h30 yesterday morning, because he was struggling to breathe.

“I immediately drove to his house at Rocky Crest and picked him up. While on our way his last words to me were: ‘Please call the production manager to reschedule the shoot.” And that was it. It’s so surreal. I can’t believe he is gone,” Peters says.

He says Ndjavera, a theatre educator and award-winning actor, was booked for a shoot yesterday at 16h00, and was looking forward to it.

David was a part-time lecturer at the University of Namibia (Unam) and the International University of Management, while he also lectured part-time at the College of the Arts.

The actor was known for his roles in the movies ‘Katutura’, ‘Hairareb’ and ‘The Taste of Rain’.

He also wrote ‘A Camelthorn and a Rhino Horn: A laboratory theatre experiment of crafting and staging a dramatic event in Namibia’, a thesis that was reproduced by Unam in 2019.