The Inland populaces of Ndiyona Constituency in the Kavango East Region have taken ownership of their own development and de-bushed about 28-kilometre roads for easy access to their villages.
The residents of Dumushi, Dosa, Shambahe, and Makena Villages took up what they call the DSD community project in January this year.
The villagers received approval from the regional leadership for them to commence with the project.
Villagers found it difficult to access their villages as they did not have a proper road and experienced car accidents due to the bad road.
This is in addition to excessive transport fares.
Participant Pyurity Situmbeko says. "As you saw when you came, we are deep in the village in the inland, and by inland, we are restricted to both developments that are taking place at the roadside. That's why we came up with the idea that we want to also be reaching out to that side, and we want those developments to reach us here. We are having fare problems; sometimes the owner of the car will say you paid me N$1,000 for you to reach the roadside. We were having problems; that's why we started the debushing programme."
"Without this road, we would use donkeys for us to go to the road and get the food we bought or that we got from the river, I am really happy with what we have done because now we can move freely and our children will access their schools," says project group leader Maliro Muyeu.
Stven Katjware, a participant, says, "The transport fare is very expensive, and the owner of the car reasons that the road is not good, and if the car breaks down, I will bear the consequences alone. In the whole of Ndiyona Constituency, there is no proper road leading inland, car scratches and car accidents do happen here due to the many blind spots."
The project was founded and funded by teachers from the village.
"The aim of our project is to meet our government halfway. When we started, we faced many challenges, such as food, transport, fuel, and so on, but we managed up to now to clear the road up to 27 km, exactly where our road started from the very said village of Dumushi up to Makena," says project leader Gabriel Mhata.
The team received an amount of N$5,000 from the regional council to be used as compensation for the participants.
At least 21 men and women from the village took part in the seven-month project.
The villagers now call on the government to continue where they left off.
"When people clear their road, that means that it's a shout out to the ministry of works and transport that our road has gravel, remember, this is just a debushed road, so if we leave it like that after a few years, there are still some stumps to germinate, which we are trying to avoid."