Namibia no longer prosecutes women who abandon their babies but not everyone is aware of the new law.
The discovery of the dead body of a newborn baby abandoned behind a school in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, last November shows that a change in the law was not enough to solve the problem.
"It was not an easy decision, as a mother, to carry a baby for nine months and give it away. But I still did it because of the situation I was in," Linda says in a low voice. She is talking about being unable to afford another child. She adds: "But for the fifth born, if there is no meal, he would not understand anything. So I just thought: 'I have to give this baby away, to someone who would take better care of him.'""I do miss him, I miss my baby because I breastfed him for three days, but I know he's okay, he's with the right people.
It was already in existence before the law changed but Mrs Peters is hoping to set up more, elsewhere in the country. "Every time I hear of another baby that was dumped, I feel very guilty, it feels that it's my fault, because I didn't do enough awareness."Poverty, such as in the case of Linda, is one reason why mothers feel they are not able to look after a child.
Mercia Chingwaramusee, a social worker who works on this issue, acknowledges that despite the change in the law, there is a stigma and "the fear of people knowing that you went to drop your child there".
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