During an excursion to the most northern extensions of Katutura over the weekend, the everyday reality of poverty struck me again. This area known as Ombili is a slowly expanding, sprawling shanty town consisting of carton, plastic and corrugated metal shacks. In local parlance, we fondly call such dwellings okambashu.I don't know whose overactive imagination came up with the name Ombili. Visually, it certainly is a misnomer, there's very little peace in a shanty town, but I suspect it is a mollifier to make the prospect of poverty more bearable.

The skunks of the underworld are surfing cyberspace again. My computer have landed at least twenty emails purporting to come from this or that bank, and urging me to please check my account details.Most of these mails are an insult, not because they are criminal but because the sender must really think we are all stupid. Checking with colleagues and other associates, I learned that thousands of Internet users in Namibia were bombarded with the same barrage of cyber crime.