Residents of the Kavango West Region have been coming out in numbers to receive their monthly drought relief food. 

Our news team paid a visit to Kaguni Village in the Kapako Constituency and caught up with some beneficiaries. 

The aid consists of two 12.5 kg bags of unsifted maize meal, one 1.5 kg packet of beef, and a 750 ml bottle of cooking oil.

This is the drought relief food meant to nourish one household for at least a month. 

35-year-old Victoria Tjilombo, who has a disability, is an unemployed mother of three. 

She is a beneficiary of the drought relief food but claims the distribution is sporadic, and she therefore has to find alternative means of survival.

"My living condition is unpleasant because I don't have money. We will not have food unless I go into the forest and collect magunis and monkey oranges. I also take my children along to search for Nongongo or Manketti to go and sell. If we don't find anything, then we end up sleeping hungry." 

To ensure that the drought relief food lasts, Tjilombo rations it. She claims they only eat one meal a day.
 
"If we eat in the afternoon, then we don't eat in the evening, and vice versa. If we eat both lunch and dinner, then the food will not last, and it will be difficult for us to find something to eat." 

Tjilombo does not have national documents and therefore cannot benefit from a disability grant. 

She says her parents are deceased, and the Namibian family members who are able to vouch for her at Home Affairs need to be assisted with transport money, which she cannot afford. She has now given up altogether. 

"This will be my fate until I die. Even if I request assistance, it will not help." 

32-year-old Tamale Shikanda is another unemployed mother of six. 

She too has a disability, and like Tjilombo, she also survives on Manketti as a source of food and sells Maguni for a living. 

Once in a while, her husband's family assists, but if not, they go to bed hungry. 

This is the third time the family has benefited from the drought relief food. 

"We don't eat the drought relief food for a month. It only lasts for two weeks. When it is finished, we have to go look for some domestic work if we want enough food to last us until the end of the month." 

She says the only reason they are benefiting from the drought relief food is that her husband has national documents and is therefore the beneficiary. 

Shikanda is just one of the many residents in the Kavango regions without national documents.