Ouma Lena celebrates 99 glorious years

“I am now so old that I can no longer work. All I can do is work with my mouth. My work starts at five in the morning. Then I pray for everyone from Oshakati and to Grootfontein, Tsumeb and Otjiwarongo. When I get to Okahandja, I doze off and rest a bit. Then, when I wake up, I spend half an hour with the Master praying for my children and family, and then I take the prayer further down to Windhoek, Rehoboth, Mariental and the far South...

“In between, if loneliness grips me, I sing,” Ouma Carolina Bezuidenhoudt, or Ouma Lena as she is affectionately known by her family and friends,” said.

Ouma Lena celebrated her 99th birthday with her family in Okahandja in June this year.

She was born in Aroab and grew up and went to school in Stampriet, Witkrans and Mariental.

“My mother was mute. Because I was the eldest, my grandmother taught me how to communicate with my mother in sign language.”

She did not finish school because she had to take care of her mother.

Ouma Lena was 12 when the family lived on a farm in the Stampriet area. Her father was a builder there. “Then one day, the man who worked with my father disappeared and I became my father's assistant.”

Her father was a stone mason who built with natural stone. He brought the stones to the building site and cut and ground them so that they would fit in and on each other.

“I would carry the stones to where he needed them. I suffered. I was tired. I was only a child and my arms and legs hurt. I cried and told my father that I couldn’t anymore and he just said: ‘Come on my child, you know we don’t have anyone else; you have to help me’.”

Carrying stones was not her only task. She also carried cement in a bucket. “It was very heavy and so I would drag the bucket behind me. I would drag the cement to him and pour it into the mix so that he could build.”

Once she married, her husband was also a builder who worked mainly in Okahandja, Hochfeld and surroundings. Her sons are the well-known Bezuidenhoudt builders who built and developed vast areas of Okahandja.

“When you drive into Okahandja and you see the flats and buildings with the shiny roofs, you can tell it was built by my sons,” she said proudly.



Life’s lessons

Ouma Lena says her cheekbone, where a donkey kicked her as a child, sometimes still hurts a little.

“One day a man arrived at the farm and said that he and my father were going to look for an oryx that had been injured by a farmer. He left his donkey cart full of salt lick and said that when he had sold it all, he would give me sweets.”

The man left and it wasn't long before her mother let her know that the donkey was eating the lick.

“I smacked him with a leather thong and then he kicked me so that I fell over. I staggered to my feet as I choked on my own blood. I went to my mother while she was doing laundry. There was a pot with boiling water and she poured some of the water over my head, burning me in the process.

An elderly Damara man arrived and saw her with her swollen face. He asked her what had happened, turned around and walked into the veld. He came back with a root that he placed into the coals next to her mother's pot of hot water.

“He took it out and scraped off the ash with a knife. When it was clean, he scraped the white off the root and ground it fine. He then put the powder in an old sock and gave it to me and told me to sniff. I snorted a few times and then my tears started to flow, and I sneezed and sneezed until the blood splattered. The man said I should keep sniffing until the blood is no longer red and that I would be well then. I did this until only shiny water was and here I am celebrating my 99th birthday!”



Family life

Ouma Lena and late Adrian Bezuidenhoudt were married in Mariental in 1945. On a Sunday in 1989, he died of a heart attack in the Gobabis district. He was buried on the farm, but ten years ago the family had his remains moved to Okahandja. “We did it to bring him closer to us and so that when I go, I can lie down next to him.”

Ouma Lena is the mother of 13 children. She has 39 grandchildren who are still alive, and according to her, she cannot count the number of great-grandchildren because they are too many.

According to son Andries: “My father heard there was work in Okahandja and so they moved here. Upon their arrival, they lived in a corrugated iron shack before moving to a house in Nau-Aib. There was nothing here in Okahandja when they arrived.

“In the early 1960s, my father built two rooms in which 80 children went to school. It was the first school here. The first church was also founded in the rooms. My mother organised and held prayer meetings. She helped to organise bazaars and kept the church going. It was the first church in our community.”

Eric, her youngest son, contracted polio when he was seven months old. He said: “I was in and out of Katutura hospital and had very little of my childhood and youth. Only at the age of ten did I really get to know my parents, brothers and sisters.”

He describes his mother as a God-fearing woman. “In the evenings we sat around her bed and sang, read the Bible and prayed. She went to church until her strength would no longer allow it.”

According to daughter, Jeanny van Rooyen, Ouma Lena is the best mother in the world. “She is gentle and loving, not only towards her children but towards everyone she knows and meets. Love radiates from her. We are 13 children and not only us, but the whole family and community, passed through her hands."

Daughter Anna-Marie Bezuidenhoudt is equally proud of her hardworking mom who pushed a wheelbarrow, mixed building material, milked cows and split karakul skins.

“Her hands and heart have always been open to the community and family. If anyone would come looking for food, she would give it to them.”

When asked if she would want to live to see a 100, Ouma Lena said: “Jinne, I don't want to be that old. The world is an unsavoury place. I’d rather go and not see unnecessary things. But if He wants to give me another year, then I'll say thank you.”