Not far from her is one of the busy ‘tombo huise’ (tombo houses), as they call them at Gobabis’ Kanaan B settlement. SILENCING HUNGER PANGS … A young mother drinks tombo at a shebeen at Kanaan B informal settlement. “They don’t have a choice but to drink tombo,” she says. Marta Afrikaans (25) says: “Yes, tombo makes you full, but I don’t drink it every day, because I don’t always have money to buy it.” Martha Afrikaner (29) says she used to drink tombo, but stopped after the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare allegedly threatened to take her children away over neglect.