Karma Pedestrian Journey
For those 11 minutes walking from the BP to my place, she was my footsteps.
What can I say about the situation of the homeless? I can say that I am not blind. I can say that I walk these streets about as often as I breathe. The inner city is a decrepit thing. Orwell, saw it, Marechera saw it, Mongane Serote saw it, Jesus, son of Joseph saw it. Everyone pretty much knows that destitution is the second oldest profession.
Yet the inner city does little to curb this problem. In fact, it creates it in so many ways.
Allow me to put it into perspective: We can put a rover on another planer but we can’t solve homelessness.
So…I’m walking in the evening, it’s about 10-ish. The air is dry, no humidity at all. And so still. It was horrendous. Not so bad if you’re sleeping outside because you’d need less to keep you warm. But I’ve been homeless, I mean, it was only a week, but WHAT A WEEK! There have been and there will be colder nights than this one. I get to the arage , because I’ve decided to buy airtime for the first time in just over a week. I’d taken a detour into the pubs of Davenport to find out what the In kids are up to. Usual Tuesday dreariness. Nothing but liquor and drunk Physicists, snuff sniffing Mathematicians and degenerate Directors. Okay, a bit more than that but tat’s unimportant.
My point: The garage has a body, sleeping on her side, in the open air of the Berea suburbs. The body is Black. She looks worn by the streets like an old shoe. But we’re probably the same age. She barely has a voice. Or maybe she’s just not used to speaking in volumes that won’t draw sympathy. Pathos has a name. Igama lakhe uNonhlanhla. Uvela eThornwood, Marianhill and to tell you the truth, I don’t know which direction Marianhill is. I know it’s In KZN, though. She tells ukuthi owakwaNgcobo. Not much else. She tells me all this because I woke her and promised her a duvet. There will be colder nights than this not so bad stillness in the air.
She tells me of police vans. Kidnappings. Disappearances Bo dy dumping. She names places. Stanger. Ndwedwe. Tongaat.
“Wherever they feel like leaving you,” she tells me. Of course, we’re having our best attempt at a conversation in Zulu, strictly. I don’t know if Nonhlanhla speaks any English. But I’m walking home with her to give away a bag that I used when I was homeless. I carried my clothes and a few books. Now it just carries a duvet. It was so heavy! This terrible long sack made of thick cotton. Dandelion flowers on it, I remember. It saw me through my trial of homelessness and maybe, just maybe, it’ll see her through hers. I have a lot of work to do, and I really don’t have any more duvets to give away. Serious action needs to be taken.
The only difference between us and the pavement is the stock price of our bank( I call them ‘wanks’) of choice.
Delinking freom the banking system is gonna save us. This is known. I’ve mostly given up on the State apparatus being aable to make any radical changes. Their whitewash is tiring.
We have the land. Taking it is the next step. These governments in Southern Africa have not seen a thing yet.
What can I say about the situation of the homeless? I can say that I am not blind. I can say that I walk these streets about as often as I breathe. The inner city is a decrepit thing. Orwell, saw it, Marechera saw it, Mongane Serote saw it, Jesus, son of Joseph saw it. Everyone pretty much knows that destitution is the second oldest profession.
Yet the inner city does little to curb this problem. In fact, it creates it in so many ways.
Allow me to put it into perspective: We can put a rover on another planer but we can’t solve homelessness.
So…I’m walking in the evening, it’s about 10-ish. The air is dry, no humidity at all. And so still. It was horrendous. Not so bad if you’re sleeping outside because you’d need less to keep you warm. But I’ve been homeless, I mean, it was only a week, but WHAT A WEEK! There have been and there will be colder nights than this one. I get to the arage , because I’ve decided to buy airtime for the first time in just over a week. I’d taken a detour into the pubs of Davenport to find out what the In kids are up to. Usual Tuesday dreariness. Nothing but liquor and drunk Physicists, snuff sniffing Mathematicians and degenerate Directors. Okay, a bit more than that but tat’s unimportant.
My point: The garage has a body, sleeping on her side, in the open air of the Berea suburbs. The body is Black. She looks worn by the streets like an old shoe. But we’re probably the same age. She barely has a voice. Or maybe she’s just not used to speaking in volumes that won’t draw sympathy. Pathos has a name. Igama lakhe uNonhlanhla. Uvela eThornwood, Marianhill and to tell you the truth, I don’t know which direction Marianhill is. I know it’s In KZN, though. She tells ukuthi owakwaNgcobo. Not much else. She tells me all this because I woke her and promised her a duvet. There will be colder nights than this not so bad stillness in the air.
She tells me of police vans. Kidnappings. Disappearances Bo dy dumping. She names places. Stanger. Ndwedwe. Tongaat.
“Wherever they feel like leaving you,” she tells me. Of course, we’re having our best attempt at a conversation in Zulu, strictly. I don’t know if Nonhlanhla speaks any English. But I’m walking home with her to give away a bag that I used when I was homeless. I carried my clothes and a few books. Now it just carries a duvet. It was so heavy! This terrible long sack made of thick cotton. Dandelion flowers on it, I remember. It saw me through my trial of homelessness and maybe, just maybe, it’ll see her through hers. I have a lot of work to do, and I really don’t have any more duvets to give away. Serious action needs to be taken.
The only difference between us and the pavement is the stock price of our bank( I call them ‘wanks’) of choice.
Delinking freom the banking system is gonna save us. This is known. I’ve mostly given up on the State apparatus being aable to make any radical changes. Their whitewash is tiring.
We have the land. Taking it is the next step. These governments in Southern Africa have not seen a thing yet.
Thanks for writing this, mfowethu. Your writings are very grounded, and I mean that literally. The things I learn from you through this are things you learn by walking, seeing realities atop the earth. The irony of uNonhlanhla's name really hurt me to read. She must have seen such terrible things done by this country's policing force against human life.
ReplyDeleteWhere I live, I spoke with some people who had just been removed from a tiny corner of nearby land, along a train track. I asked them why they did it, even though the answer was obviously the greed of the bureaucracy, and he said he didn't know. What he did know was that, even though it was nearing the end of winter, it was still extremely cold. They now had no place to make fires, and no blankets, no bags, because they were taken. By the despicable group called the "Claremont Improvement Initiative" or someting vile like that.