Car knocks mother of 10 children to death

Life has become even more desperate for 10 orphaned children who lost their mother recently in a car accident.

Gale Moipolai, 40, was hit by a car and died on the spot on March 2. She was buried this past weekend in Mmatseta.

Speaking at the family home recently, Gale’s mother, Diane Moipolai, 72, said she was woken up by a frantic knock on the fateful night and it was Gale’s eldest son.

“He was crying hysterically and told me his mother was hit by a car. We are all devastated and heartbroken especially for the small children who will grow up never having got to truly know their mother,” said the grief-stricken grandmother.

She also carries a broken leg and cracked rib which she says she sustained two years ago after being hit by a car at the same spot where her daughter died. Even when she was still alive, Gale and her children lived a hard life according to relatives. Unemployed for a large part of her life save for ‘piece jobs’ here and there, with no dignified home to speak of except a one-roomed shack, the family survived on food parcels and clothes donated by Good Samaritans.

With Gale suddenly gone, the Moipolai family is now in crisis mode about who will care for Gale’s 10 children aged between 22 years and 15 months old. The two older siblings dropped out of school, seven go to Matseta Primary School while the last born is a little over a year old.

When The Midweek Sun team visited the family recently, the matter was yet to be discussed because the family was still busy with burial preparations but according to the relatives, they will most likely have to remain with their grandmother and 86 year-old grandfather.

“Many of us are struggling with health issues and have barely enough to feed our own families,” one of the aunts, Sale Naswe told the publication.

“We also think it is important that they are not separated and should grow up together. That is why we strongly feel they should remain here with their grandmother and plead with government and other Good Samaritans to assist them,” she said.

The grandparents, both of whom are also struggling health-wise, stay in a one and half bed-roomed house and depend on occasional Ipelegeng jobs to make ends meet. “I was recently bitten by a snake and am still recuperating. I’m partially blind. I can barely take care of my wife. I don’t know how we are going to take care of these children when we can barely take care of ourselves. It’s a tough situation we are in,” said the grandfather.