3 July 2009
IN the dusty yard of the light purple house children skip on the tires sunk into the ground as the woman sitting in the shade of the roof over-hang looks on with a half smile on her lips.
This is the Sunrise Centre, in the impoverished Kunene Region town of Khorixas, which is home to 23 orphaned and abandoned children.
Founded by Marianna Garises (35) in 1998, Sunrise was once home to more than 40 children.
The Centre started when Garises took in three homeless underage boys caught stealing food at a local shop in 1998.
Garises, a mother of three young children and a devout Christian, knows what it is to be parentless, having lost her own at a very young age.
This has inspired the soft-spoken 35-year-old to do all she can to provide the best home possible to the children in her care.
With poverty rife at Khorixas, Marianna Garises and her husband, Ananias, have found it tough going to keep the Centre, which also doubles as their home, afloat.
And only recently has the Centre been recognised as a welfare organisation.
"I did not receive any money from Government or anyone when I started this place. In fact, the place only received recognition from Government to operate as a welfare organisation only now since its formation in 1998," says Garises.
However, through all the hardship, the Sunrise Centre has managed to attract donors to its cause of caring for unwanted children.
Since 2003, when she was stationed at Khorixas with the Ministry of Health, former British volunteer Annita Bird, who has since returned to her country, has been regularly sending money to Garises for the upkeep of the children.
"Annita has since upped the N$150 weekly donation to N$1 000 a month and we really thank her for her kind heartedness. The money really came in very handy and we became kind of self-sufficient, but feeding 23 mouths is not a joke," says Garises.
"Another volunteer from Norway, Susan Groter, who was attached to Khorixas by the SCORE organisation, bought us 10 goats in 2004. The number has grown since and we are able to slaughter and sell the braaivleis to raise funds," she adds.
Other benefactors have since come to the aid of the Sunrise Centre, donating various items regularly - Multi Save Stores and Khorixas Butchery regularly donate groceries and afval and left-over meat cuts, while the Dutch Reformed Church at the town supplied the house with electricity and Walvis Bay-based Independent Engineering donated 10 mattresses, two beds and clothes to the centre. The !Gowati and Twyfelfontein lodges also donate vegetables every second week.
Independent Engineering has also offered to take the children on holiday to the coast in August.
The Centre also receives maize meal, canned fish and cooking oil, in small quantities, from Government's Drought Relief Programme, through the office of Kunene Regional Governor Dudu Murorua.
The children of the Centre will also soon start receiving Government grants from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, following a pledge made by First Lady Penexupifo Pohamba.
However, because of the assistance the Centre has received over the years, some in the community have accused Garises of exploiting the children to get money.
"It is and has never been my intention to gain any financial reward by taking care of these children. I went through a lot of hardships to maintain this place and I have to thank my husband for being such an understanding and considerate person," says Garises.
The Sunrise Centre reached prominence last Saturday when Mogale Entertainment, with Everank Trading Enterprise, OK Foods (Outjo), Karin #Guises (Big Daddy) and The Namibian banded together for the staging of the Winter Charity Show, featuring Tate Buti, Raphael & Pele, !Aubasen, Reggie Adams, Axue, Bauz and Ras Cool, to raise funds for the centre.
Marianne Garises of Khorixas' Sunrise Centre can be contacted at 081 419 5262 and (067)-331 034.
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