Life Under the Table

PRE-preface

2008-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

So I wrote this "book" WAY back in 2003! I went through several "ups" and "downs", with several different publishers. Actually, the first publishing house I submitted it to (I won’t name names) contacted me back within a week of them reading it. The editor loved it and called me in for a very promising meeting. She said that she can see her publishing house accepting my book, and would go ahead and get the first “steps” in place, but the “final decision maker” was on leave until the end of the year. She gave me contracts to look through, and I waited to hear back.

Kind of stupid I guess, but I was hopeful. Well, I did hear back form them, almost a year later, and they informed me that the “final decision maker” did not like it. Oh well. So I continued on, with plenty of empty promises, and let downs. It is now 2008! Almost 2009!!!! I still feel this is a message that “needs to get out”. So I have decided just to put it online. It’s probably better anyways, because I like little details like putting words in ALL CAPS and doing more than one explanation mark when I REALLY mean something…yeah, and I have been told publishing houses do not allow stuff like that.

Anyways, of course things have changed since I wrote this book; both in me, in Cape Town and even with the situation of the children living on the streets. But I just decided to leave it be and let the “story” of my situations tell themselves. Even with my personal ideals that may have changed, the ever evolving situation of homeless children in Cape Town, and the quickly developing city itself, I hope you will be touched by the message of these stories and experiences. So here it is; probably not always grammatically correct, very raw, tons of explanation points, plenty of ALL CAPS, and simply my experiences with some of the most amazing people I have ever met!

Preface

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Aaaaah, Cape Town!!
The beautiful coastal city nestled at the foot of magnificent Table Mountain. From the luxurious beaches of Camps Bay to the hustle and bustle of the busy township life of Kayelitsha, Cape Town is full of spirit and energy. It is also not a coincidence that Cape Town is known as the Mother City, since thousands of children, over the years, have made the streets of Cape Town their home. Under the covering of Table Mountain, they flock to her for different reasons but come together and learn how to survive and make a living on the streets of downtown Cape Town.
Who would have thought, a short, white, American kid from the small southern town of Cookeville, Tennessee, would end up in Cape Town, South Africa working with street kids! But, it happened. And in the time I have spent here I have had experiences of all sorts that have definitely engraved themselves into my memory in a way that I will never forget.
Most of my experiences are happy, exciting, fun and joyful but there are definitely also the sad, heart breaking and scary ones too.
But, all of these together have given me a life experience that I could not have bought at the most expensive of universities. I would not trade ANY of them for anything! This book is just a quick glimpse of my experiences and my life under the Table.

When thinking about writing it I really struggled with what angle to take. I wanted to give a good picture of the different aspects of street kids’ lives. I wondered, should I tell it in chronological order, should I group it in different types of events, or should I just tell short little stories? I didn’t come to any conclusions so it is kind of a mixture of all of the above. I hope you enjoy it and maybe even get something out of it.

(Most of the names are changed, or not mentioned, to protect the identity of the kids.)

1. What is a “Street Kid”?

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“Street kid”.

These words have become generic in this day and age. These are words that spark up all types of emotions in all types of people. Some feel angry, some feel guilty, some feel sad, and some just plain don’t care.
What is a street kid? Or should I say, who are these street kids?
Because you can find them in many different countries all over the world, there is definitely no one concrete definition. Though some factors might be the same from place to place, each country, even city, has its own factors that contribute to forming this social phenomenon that we like to label as a “street kid”.
In Angola you might find that the “street kids” are orphans because their parents were killed in the war. In Brazil you might find that the “street kids” are just a product of their poor economical environment who saw the streets as the only option for themselves. In England you might just see the “street kids” as rebellious “punks” that have chosen an alternative lifestyle. In the same way, the situation in Cape Town is just as unique.
A street culture has been formed from many different factors and it has given birth to these children we like to call “street kids”.
Within the first few minutes of coming into Cape Town, a new street kid will be introduced to some kind of drug. This may allow them to take their minds off whatever they have run away from, and also the harsh reality they have run into. They are also introduced into a whole new world, a subculture of other kids who have managed to make it out of similar situations.
There are all sorts of dangerous factors on the streets but the excitement usually outweighs the danger, and the kid is sucked into the street life.
The new street kid will eventually join a group of other ‘veteran’ street kids. Maybe he knows a few of them from his community, or maybe they are new acquaintances. Whichever way, they become his family. They count on each other for money, food, protection, and whatever else they need.
The new street kid finds a place where he belongs. Something he may never have experienced at home.
The kids come to town for many reasons. Though all of the stories have similarities and start to sound the same after a while, each one is just as unique as the kid that is telling it.
The kids come from communities that are torn apart from family breakdown, alcohol and drug abuse, poverty and gangsterism. The gangsters run many of these communities, and the people live in constant fear of them. The gangsters are involved in all types of crime and it is a common occurrence for two rival gangs to engage in a gun battle, right in the middle of a neighborhood, with no care or concern for innocent bystanders.
The education system in these communities is also seriously lacking because of the disadvantages branching out of the Apartheid system. The schools are overcrowded, the teachers are burnt-out and underpaid, most of the schools are in bad physical condition, some of the schools in these areas are run by gangsters and there is little to no truancy officers to follow up on the kids that are skipping school.
All of these factors put together make for a weak and unstable structure for the kids.
The trouble for the street kid usually begins in the community where they start roaming around because they have been kicked out of school, or have just decided not to go anymore.
Sometimes the kid is sent into town by his family to beg for money and there he is exposed to the street life. Sometimes the kid goes with a brother or a friend and is introduced into this new world. Sometimes the kid just finds his way into town in search of this myth of a place he has heard about.
When you ask some of the kids why they came into town you will most of the time hear, “My mom drinks too much.” Usually following that sentence you will also hear that she beats him.
But, the majority of the kids in downtown Cape Town are runaways contrary to the romantic Oliver Twist view that they are all orphans. The majority of the kids do have a family to go back to. The family may provide horrible living conditions, but it is their family all the same.
In Cape Town, there are different classifications of kids on the streets. The first are the actual “street kids”, or strollers, as they are called in Cape Town. These are the kids that have run away from home and live, sleep, and survive on the streets.
The second group is known as the daytime strollers. These are the kids that come into town for the day to make money and then go back home to their communities at night. They will do anything from begging, to parking cars for money, to any odd jobs they can find. Some of them are also involved in crime, such as robbing people and breaking into cars.
The third group of kids that you will commonly find on the street is those that are living with their families on the street. These kids tend to be more sheltered than the street kids and the parents usually try to keep them out of trouble and away from the kids that are doing drugs.
The parents do however often use them to beg for money, usually to support their drug or alcohol habits. Children living with their parents on the street can live in that situation for only so long before they begin to explore and wander away from their parents. These children eventually also get sucked into the street life as they get older.
There are also other classifications like the older street adults and gangsters. These adults sometimes look after groups of the younger children and offer them protection in return for money. They also abuse and take advantage of the kids on a regular basis.
There are also girls on the streets but not nearly as many as the number of boys for several reasons. In the communities the kids come from, the girls are usually kept busy around the house. Culturally, they have to help cook, clean and look after younger siblings, which keeps them occupied and away from trouble.
Life on the streets is also much more taxing for girls. Their sole purpose is sex, either through prostitution or just to meet the sexual needs and desires of the boys that live on the streets.
Many of the girls will meet up with one of the older boys and become his girlfriend. The majority of these relationships turn into abusive relationships, with the boyfriend physically, verbally and sexually abusing the girl on a regular basis. For these reasons street life is much harder for them than it is for the boys.
The main thing that attracts the kids and holds them captive is the freedom and the money. Not just the money by itself, but mostly what it can get for them. There is much more money and more opportunities to make money in downtown Cape Town than there is in the surrounding communities.
The kids make money in many different ways. Some of them get into crime by breaking into cars and robbing people. Some of the boys resort to prostitution and some do odd jobs, but one of the most common ways of making money is to simply beg for it.
The majority of the money that the strollers make from begging, odd jobs or crime is spent on drugs. There is quite a wide variety of drugs on the streets. The most common drugs used by street kids are glue and thinners.
The glue is usually huffed out of a plastic bag or plastic drink container that the kids call a piney. The benzene paint thinners are huffed from a rag that the boys call a lappie (Afrikaans for ‘rag’).
One of the boys holds the bottle of thinners and the others splash the liquid onto their lappie. They hold the lappie in their fists in front of their mouths and breathe the vapors in and out.
The next most common drug is marijuana, otherwise known as ganja or dagga. The boys will usually roll it up in newspaper and make what they call a slowboat or they will smoke it out of a broken bottleneck, which they call a groenpyp (Afrikaans for ‘green pipe’).
The next step up is a drug called mandrax, otherwise known as buttons. Mandrax is a pill that used to be a prescription-sleeping tablet, but was outlawed. It is crushed up and smoked over ganja or tobacco or in a mixture of both, in what is known as a witpyp (Afrikaans for ‘white pipe’). It is common but more expensive than the other drugs.
The highest up on the chain and most addictive and expensive drug that some of the kids use is crack, otherwise known as rocks. Because of its addictive qualities and high price, the kids that smoke it have to do whatever they can to make money.
All of these mentioned above are the main drugs that the kids use, along with the daily smoking of cigarettes. These addictions contribute to the holding power the street life has on the kids.
It is easy to forget they are kids. They have been robbed of their innocence and their childhood has been ripped way. They are children taking on adult roles on a daily basis. It is easy for people to see these little dirty kids with outstretched hands and judge them. It is easy to walk right by them and ignore them.
Some people give them money just to get the kids to leave them alone, or to ease their consciences. It is easy to look at someone’s situation and judge them without trying to understand what brought them to that point. At the end of the day, each and every street kid is simply a child, deep down inside.
They are children in need of love, attention, care, affection, hope, and a place to belong. These are the very things they are truly looking for on the streets of Cape Town.

2. Growing Up

2008-11-11T04:57:00.003-08:00

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about my childhood. For one reason, I don’t want to bore you with the details. But mostly, I just want to get to the reason I wrote this book: the kids. But every good story has to have background details. All of my friends know that I can’t tell a story without telling the background details first. So here we go…
I came into this world on November 7th, 1980. I grew up in a small southern town in the United States, called Cookeville, Tennessee.
I had a pretty average upbringing; nothing too out of the ordinary. We weren’t rich and we weren’t poor. Growing up, I was never in need, and I had much of the stuff that I wanted most of the time too. You know, like the coolest new toys, which at that time ranged all the way from He-man action figures, in my early years, to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I got a little older.
I grew up in a suburban neighborhood with a lot of kids around to play with. I had two loving parents, but more important to this story, I had grandparents who helped to instill within me from a young age a love to travel. We went on vacation every summer and we would see everything the destination had to offer!!
I had two brothers and my younger brother, Tanner, died when I was 12. Looking back, that was a landmark in my life. That is basically when I decided to become “hard” and not show my emotions. I went on without crying or showing much emotion for the next three years.
Another landmark in my life was when my parents divorced when I was 15. It was quite a surprise to me. In my lifetime, in our small town, I saw divorce go from being a really rare and strange thing to becoming just a part of every day life. I acted as though it didn’t faze me but deep down it really did. I struggled to get used to seeing my mom and dad with different partners.
As most teenagers do, I got into a bit of trouble. Nothing too crazy or rare though. That was when I started smoking, drinking, and then went on to smoke pot for a while.
I also enjoyed stealing. I never really stole stuff I needed, well except for cigarettes because they are hard to get for a minor, but I just enjoyed the rush of stealing stuff and getting away with it.
Anyway, when I was 16 years old I experienced another huge landmark in my life. This was definitely the biggest.
I hung out with my friend’s family at their house every single day and I was amazed at their compassion and love that they so freely showed towards me. I knew that they were Christians and they did not back down on their beliefs in front of me but at the same time, they never once forced it on me.
Finally, over a series of days I got into conversations with my friend’s spiritually mature, twelve year old younger sister and she told me stories and just shared different experiences that she had gone through. She led me to the Lord and I became a Christian.
My whole life I had gone to a more traditional kind of church and had never thought about God as being real. He always seemed like some sort of far off fairy tale to me and the Bible seemed like a storybook.
The stories that the little girl told me all seemed to center around God not only being real, but alive and active in the lives of people in this modern day that we live in. This was new and attractive to me.
I went to church with them the following Sunday and was amazed at how loving and accepting the people were. It was that day in May 1997 that I gave my heart to the Lord. The moment I did, I felt a warmth come over my whole body. It was almost like someone poured warm oil over my head. I felt a peace like I had never before experienced in my life. I began to uncontrollably cry. Needless to say, it felt good after a three year build up!
That day I quit smoking, drinking and smoking pot. I didn’t quit that stuff because I felt like I had to, but because I had found something better. I quit them because I found something to fill the emptiness I had been trying to fill with them, and I quit them because I wanted to. I worked on my foul language and lying and things like that along the way.
From that day on I got extremely involved with my church. In my junior year of high school I was in a Christian rock band called Manna. We had concerts almost every weekend that school year and it was a great experience for me.
I also got involved in the local government project areas and trailer park areas of my town. Some friends of mine and I would do free cookouts in those areas and build relationships with the people there. I really enjoyed it.
Somewhere in all of that both of my parents got remarried. I now have what you might consider an “average American family”: a mom, a dad, a step-mom, a step-dad, one blood brother, one stepbrother, one half-brother and one half-sister.
As westerners, we tend to complicate stuff like that. In Africa, they would ALL be considered brothers and sisters. Heck, my two first cousins who I grew up with would also be considered my brother and sister. So, in proper African style, I have four brothers and two sisters.

3. First Time To Cape Town

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When I graduated from high school in May 1999, I wanted to travel but also do something worthwhile. I looked into some mission organizations to see what kind of programs they offered.
After looking at several options, I decided to go with a Discipleship Training School, otherwise known as DTS, with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The DTS is a six-month school that is the entry course for the University of The Nations and also just a good school to allow people to “get their feet wet” in missions.
The first three months are lectures on foundational Christian teachings and principles and the second three months is a practical outreach phase. I was one step ahead, because I knew that I wanted to attend the school, but the question was where was I going to do it? YWAM has hundreds of bases all over the world.
I was given a book with a list of all the locations of the bases and I was told to prayerfully go through it. Well, I did and the base that really stuck out to me was Muizenberg, South Africa.
Muizenberg is a suburb of Cape Town. I had never heard of it in my life but I prayed about it, and got some confirmations that Muizenberg was the place for me to go.
One of the confirmations was from a friend who happened to be in South Africa during the time I was making the decision of where I should go.
I knew he was in Africa but I had no idea which country. When he came back to the States, the first time he saw me he came up to me and said that it was the weirdest thing but everywhere he went he saw my face when he was over there.
I asked him where exactly he had gone and he started naming the names of the different places. Most of them were suburbs of Cape Town and they were mentioned in the book I had been looking through. I could hardly believe it. I excitedly told him that I had just decided to go and attend a school in one of the very places he mentioned.
That was a pretty big confirmation for me. After a few more confirmations like that one, I officially decided on Muizenberg. I applied for the school and got accepted, and I was off.
The first three months of my school were in Muizenberg, South Africa and my outreach phase was in India. In the first three months I really enjoyed meeting all the new people from all over the world and I also enjoyed the classes.
As a part of the school, each student had to serve two days a week with a local ministry. I worked with an after-school program in an impoverished area and I went on a night soup outreach that went into downtown Cape Town. The soup outreach was lead by the people at Beautiful Gate, which is a YWAM-affiliated home for street kids that is also in Muizenberg.
At that time, they would take soup into town every other Thursday and serve it to the kids and adults living on the streets. I really enjoyed both of my ministries!
I remember the first night on soup outreach. We arrived in downtown and stopped the van when we saw a group of kids. I saw that the kids were hard and though they were kids they were rough and did not act like any other kids I had ever been around. They were not really that interested in talking to us and I realized we were going to have to put forth the effort. I also quickly saw that the kids were not quick to trust anyone, mostly because they have been picked up and thrown down so many times in their lives.
The first night I met a kid that the others call Hoppi, because he only has one leg. I was amazed at the authority this fourteen year old, one-legged kid had over the other boys. He was definitely a leader amongst the other kids.
Little by little the kids began to open up to us. It came to a point where I and a few other students enjoyed going so much that we started going on the other Thursdays that Beautiful Gate did not take soup into town.
I enjoyed learning more about this curious lifestyle of kids that were living on the streets. I also loved being around them and was always amazed at the life and excitement that they had to offer.
A friend, Ronel, and I started going into town on weekends and any other time we could to hang out with the kids. We would go every Saturday and there was a particular group that would wait for us and meet us at the train station.
In those beginning days of building relationships, I would buy meat pies and drinks for me, Ronel and any of the kids that were around and we would sit and eat and they would tell us about the life on the streets, sing and just never cease to amaze us.
They showed us all around Cape Town and taught us the “ways of the streets”. I looked forward to any opportunity I could get to hang out with them.

4. Isaiah 61

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I enjoyed DTS and was enjoying South Africa, but I still had no clue why exactly, of all the places in the world, I was there. Well, all of that changed in the events of one memorable night.
One Thursday night, when a group of friends and I were in town hanging out with the kids I saw something that impacted me in a way that I could have never imagined. We were just hanging out and talking with a group of about ten kids.
There was also an older homeless man named Snakes that was hanging around and talking with us. One of the kids, a small ten year old, was teasing an older street lady and she went up and complained to Snakes.
He went straight over to the kid, who was four times smaller than him, and backhanded him across the face. The small boy’s body flew back, like a rag doll, from the blow. His feet were lifted off the ground and he almost did a complete backwards flip, landing on his head. I can still, to this very day, vividly see the image of the small boy flying backwards and hitting the ground.
The boy jumped up and ran off in tears. This was the first time that I had ever seen one of the kids cry. Up to that point I had known them as being extremely “hard”. He ran over and sat on a bench and sobbed.
I didn’t really blame Snakes much because I realized that, though it was wrong, it was the only way he knew to handle the situation, and he was probably treated the same way when he was younger. At the same time, I felt bad for the kid.
I went over and sat beside the kid. When I sat down, I saw that he was crying uncontrollably and that his tears were coming from much deeper than just a hit across the face. It was almost as if that had been the last straw, and the hit across the face was just the thing that burst open the floodgates of all the pain, hurt, and grief that was bottled up so deep within.
I put my arm around him and tried to comfort him but felt incapable. There was really nothing I could do or say at that time and even if I had thought of anything, I didn’t speak Afrikaans at that point and he didn’t speak or understand English.
I was torn. On one side, I was happy that I could be there and offer what little comfort I could. But on the other side, I realized that there were much deeper issues that needed long-term attention. That was when something started happening in my heart. He finally stopped crying and seemed all right and I went home and went to bed.
The next day I was miserable. I kept seeing that picture of the little boy getting hit, over and over again in my head. Anytime I closed my eyes, or even blinked I saw the vivid scene play through my mind. I went to class but didn’t pay much attention and for the rest of the day I could not really figure out what was going on inside of me.
Finally, that evening, I went into my room, shut the door and decided to ask for some answers.
I started talking, out loud, to God. I said, “Ok, God, I don’t know what’s going on but I feel miserable and I’m not walking out of this room until you speak to me and tell me what is going on!!”
It was amazing! The thought, “Isaiah 61” immediately came into my head. Up to that point, I was not familiar with that scripture. I actually opened up my Bible half expecting to read something about a destruction of some city or something like that. I was taken back when I began to read the scripture. I started reading,

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God;”

As I read those lines, my eyes filled up with tears, so much that I almost couldn’t read on. I began to cry pretty hard and I read on,

“to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. THEY will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord to display His glory. THEY shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; THEY shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.”

Right then and there I knew that the Lord was calling me to work fulltime with the kids.
After that night, the other details started to fall into place one by one. I continued to pray and I got a specific vision of how to approach working with the kids. I saw that there were actually tons of people working with the kids in downtown Cape Town.
There were homes, shelters, and daily programs offered for the kids. There were soup kitchens and places where they could go to get meals, showers, and haircuts. All of these services were being provided by Christian organizations, non-Christian organizations, youth groups, churches, and even random individuals.
All of these are great (some actually are not), but it seemed like there was something missing. I saw that all of these people who offered these different services to the kids expected the kids to come to their program and conform to their rules. No one was really going out on a regular basis and hanging out with the kids on their terms and in their territory.
The ones that did hang out with the kids on the streets would not allow them to swear or use drugs in front of them and it was also very much a specific time when they would go. It was more of a nine-to-five kind of thing, a job.
Another thing that I noticed was that the majority of the relationships the kids had with the people in these organizations was based on whatever they could get out of them.
They would go to these people or organizations for the food or the clothes or whatever it is and as long as they got it, they were happy. But if they didn’t receive what they wanted, for whatever reason, they would be upset with the people or organization and would try and manipulate the situation by not attending the program anymore or by going to another organization and saying bad things about the other one.
The kids are aware of the division between the different organizations and they use it to their advantage.
Through these observations I got the vision to just go out to the streets on a daily basis, hang out with the kids, build their trust and relationships, and work towards bettering their lives in whatever way possible. For me, coming to the Lord was one of the most incredible things that ever happened to me, so I obviously also wanted to share that joy with them.
But at the same time, I saw something else that was happening. The kids’ perceptions of Christians in general were pretty warped, and for good reason. I was troubled to find out that their were some Christians that would offer things like clothes and food to the kids, but in order to get it the kids had to say the “sinners prayer” or something of that nature.
The kids in downtown Cape Town are probably the most “evangelized” group in all of Cape Town! They know exactly what to say to make the people happy, in order to get what they want out of them. I have heard some of the kids preach the gospel better than a TV evangelist.
I once heard that in one of the programs the kids were asked to draw pictures of different things. One of the pictures was supposed to be of a “Christian”. One kid drew a picture of a man holding a book. It was a good picture except there was one strange thing about it.
The man had two mouths and one ear. The child was questioned about it and he said, “Yeah, this is how Christians are!! They talk too much and never listen!!!” That is the view that most of the kids have about Christians.
I really felt that I was supposed to share with them the gift that I had received, the gift of the Lord, but I knew that it had to be in a real way. One of my favorite sayings is, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!” I adopted that as my motto and my approach with the kids.
I was called to walk with them, listen to them and to LIVE the gospel, rather than preach it. They have all had Christians come and preach to them and condemn their behavior and then go away. But they have rarely seen someone stick in there and walk through things with them and be an example to them rather than harp on them and preach to them.
So I had the vision and I went to my school leader with it. She told me that it sounded great and that YWAM would probably serve as a covering for me so I would not just be out there ‘on my own’ and would have an organization that could support me.
But she told me I should first go speak with Uncle Peter, the social worker at Beautiful Gate. I only saw that as confirmation because I had already made an appointment with him for that afternoon.
I went and spoke to Uncle Peter and told him my vision and then after I had said it all, I asked, “So…do you have a guy like that, and if not do you need a guy like that?”
He laughed and said that they did not “have a guy like that” but they would love to “have a guy like that”. I made plans to move back in August 2000 and to begin working with Beautiful Gate as their fulltime street worker.
I finished my DTS, doing my outreach phase in India. India was AMAZING and I learned a lot while I was there. I also enjoyed getting to know the street people, especially when I was in Calcutta. Spending time with them was only a confirmation that those are the type of people I love being around and I looked forward to moving back to Cape Town.
After my DTS, I went back to the States and began raising money to go back to South Africa. I had to raise a monthly support, to pay the monthly telephone bills, house rent and other expenses, because Beautiful Gate is a missions organization and I would be volunteering with them.
I raised the monthly support and money for a plane ticket and on August 1st of the year 2000, I found myself back in Cape Town.

5. Welcome Back

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What an amazing feeling it was to come back to Cape Town! I was excited to get started and embark on this new adventure that was set before me.
In the beginning stages, I really just went on trial and error. I had the few relationships that I had already built with a small group of kids and I had a general outline in my mind of how this “street work” should work, even though Beautiful Gate had never had a street worker before, and I myself had never been a street worker before.
My friend Ronel joined me on the streets in the first few months of my return. That was helpful because not only was I not in it totally alone, but Afrikaans is Ronel’s mother language.
I felt strongly that the kids should not have to conform to me and speak English, so I would get Ronel to translate what I said into Afrikaans and then she would translate what they said into English for me. This made the kids more open to communicate with us.
Because I would hear everything that I and the kids said twice, it was easy for me to pick up the language. After about three months I could understand about half of what was being said.

In the beginning, Ronel and I went to town three times a week. We would go into town and find the different groups of kids and just hang out and talk with them.
Sometimes we would take a soccer ball and play soccer in any patch of grass we could find downtown. I also led the weekly soup outreach and took a team of DTS students into town every Tuesday night.
The other two days of the week I worked with the after school program that I had been involved with during my DTS. They needed someone to lead it for a three-month period and I agreed to do it for three months and then see whether or not I could continue.
I enjoyed the after school program but after the three months was up, I stopped working with the program to allow myself more time to work with the street kids.
Around that same time, Ronel came down with Hepatitis A and she had to stay in her house, without coming out, for six weeks. This is when I started getting out on my own. This is also when I started experimenting with Afrikaans.
Up to that point, I had depended on Ronel. Now, I was on my own. The kids were incredibly patient and helpful with me. Before you knew it, I could understand about seventy-five percent of what was said and I could speak enough to get by.
In those beginning days, I would spend long hours in town. I never had a “day off” and usually went into town every single day, even if it was just to drive through and see what was going on.
Some days I would go around 10:00am or 11:00am and then stay until around 5:00pm, only to go home, grab a bite to eat and then come back in the evening and then hang out until the early hours of the morning. Those early hours of the morning are some of the best foundations for many of my relationships.
I think part of the reason is because that is what separated me from the other organizations. The kids saw that it wasn’t a nine-to-five type job for me and I learned quickly that the only effective way to work with these kids is to let it just become a lifestyle, and not a job.
They are on the streets 24/7 and they never have “off hours” so I didn’t either. I also built all of my relationships with them strictly on the relationship, and nothing else, such as food, clothing, or money.
Building relationships is the main part of my work and everything else branched out of that. From there, I would help the kids with their problems and try to work towards a better future for them.
I soon saw that although it would be ideal if they would all get off the streets, it wasn’t a practical goal because of the structure of the system and the weak structure of the broken down communities. They basically chose to be there, and no matter how hard a person tries to convince them to come off the street, it has to be them that choose to leave.
I would take them for home visits if they wanted to, take them to the hospital if they were injured or sick, go with them to court, visit them in jail, and just be there to hang out.
We would talk if they had problems and sometimes just play around and goof off and laugh. Some of the most fun times were just the totally random, spontaneous situations I would find myself in. In all of this, I learned the ways of the streets and gained respect and authority.
Authority on the streets doesn’t just come over night - it has to be earned. There were many different ways I began to earn mine.
I remember one of the first situations where I could literally see a change in how the kids viewed me. In Cape Town, the homeless people dig through the trashcans for food and the average citizen knows this. So they will often gently place leftovers from a restaurant into the trash can, knowing that someone will come by and take it. The kids always manage to find good stuff in the trashcans.
One day when I was in town, this one boy had found almost a whole pack of hot chips (French fries) in a trashcan. A group of about seven kids started dividing the chips amongst themselves. One of the boys had the idea to also share with me. Some of the boys didn’t like the idea and assumed that I would not eat out of a trashcan.
The boy looked at me and decided to offer me a handful of chips anyways.
I took them from his dirty hand and ate them without hesitating. I will never forget the looks on their faces. They laughed and said things like, “OK! Now we can see that you are one of us!!!” That was the first of many times of eating out of the trashcans with the kids. Heck, there were even times where my money didn’t come in and I was broke for a whole week, when I found a couple of meals for myself out of the trash.

6. Abba Me

2008-11-11T04:55:00.001-08:00

It was a hot Cape Town summer day. I had just taken the train into town and I got off and walked through the station. When I came out I immediately heard a little voice shout “RYAN!!”
I turned and a little eight year old kid was running up to me with a huge smile on his face. When he reached me, he greeted me, gave me a hug and asked me where I was going.
I told him I was just going to walk around a bit so he said he would join me. Then, before we started to walk, he stood in front of me, looked up, and held his hands up in the air, reaching towards me, and said, “Abba me!!”
Well, at that point, I hadn’t been in Cape Town too long and my Afrikaans wasn’t so good and I actually wasn’t even sure if he was speaking Afrikaans or English. But I thought I heard him right. I asked him to repeat it again so I could figure it out and again he said, “Abba me!!!”
Well, the only time I had ever heard the word Abba, up to that point, was the Greek word Abba, which is the intimate form of the word ‘Father’. I knew in the Bible it said, in Galatians 4:6,

‘Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of His Son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out “Abba, Father.” ’
I translated it as him saying, “Father me!!”
It took me off guard a little and it was actually very touching. I stood there for a few seconds just looking at him in bewilderment. I think my eyes kind of started to fill up with tears.
I always knew the kids really needed a father figure, but I had never experienced a kid just come right out and ask me to “father” him! He tried saying it one more time when he realized that I wasn’t getting the point and then finally, probably a bit frustrated, he just sighed and walked around behind me and started trying to climb up on my back.
He finally explained to me that to “abba” someone is to let them ride on your back. I laughed at my mistake but at the same time I learned something out of it. There is definitely a generation of fatherless kids out there and the cry of their hearts is “Abba me!!!” And what better a picture than picking someone up and carrying them on your back?!
That is our job! To father the fatherless, to pick them up and carry them on our backs, and to lead them to their heavenly Father who won’t disappoint them like their earthly fathers all have.
Well, I know what it means now, but to this very day, every time a kid asks me to “abba” him I think of it on a much deeper level.

7. Earning Respect

2008-11-11T04:54:00.002-08:00

Earning respect on the streets came easy with some kids, but for others it was a challenge. They all build up walls around them in order to protect themselves from getting hurt. Some of their walls are stronger and taller than others.
In general, the kids were extremely open to me. They have trouble trusting adults, so it helped that I was younger. I also get all my clothes at second-hand shops and I wear my shirts inside out most of the time, and have since the seventh grade. Funny enough, they also do it.
They thought that I just dressed like that to try and fit in until I told them that I had dressed like that years before I ever stepped foot in South Africa. Some of the kids call me the “white stroller” because of the way I dress.
All of these things contributed to making the kids more open to me but as I said, there were a few tough cases to crack.
One of those in particular was the kid I mentioned earlier named Hoppi. He was one of the first kids I met and when I told him I was moving back, he was excited. He asked me to get my mom to make cookies and then bring them back when I came back. So, when I came back that August of 2000, I brought some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies that my mom had made just for him.
The first day I was back I went into town to give the cookies to Hoppi. He was happy to get the cookies and couldn’t believe I had actually brought some back with me. He was happy, and all was well, at least for that day.
At that point, I had not realized that he was one of the most manipulative kids in all of Cape Town. He had total control over a whole group of boys and I soon saw the power he had over those boys. Most of the boys I knew at that point were in his group.
A few days after that, Ronel and I were back in town and we saw Hoppi. He wanted me to give him money and I said no, so he threw a huge fit and got angry and even a little violent. I just went on and talked with some other kids. I learned soon after that that I could tell what kind of mood Hoppi was in just by the moods of the other boys in his group.
If I saw one of them before I saw him and they were in a good mood, I knew he would be too. If I saw one of them and they were in a bad mood, I knew he would be too. They were extremely influenced by him!
Hoppi tested me all the time. He was still not quite sure where I stood and what my motivations were for wanting to work with the kids. He would come up to me and be nice and then he would try his luck with getting money or something out of me. If I refused, he would get angry and even threatening at times.
Then one night on soup outreach, we had a donation of meat pies so we took them instead of soup. Well, let’s just say that things got out of hand quickly.
We went to Hoppi’s group and started giving out the pies. Kids started coming up and trying to get more than one and some succeeded. The kids that only got one started complaining that others had gotten more than one, and soon the complaining turned into a mini-riot.
Hoppi was one of the main instigators of the whole scene. They got all around the van and started shaking it and I finally had to load the group up and just leave. They were throwing things at the van, hanging on it, and shaking it as we were pulling away.
Before we pulled off, Hoppi came up to my window and said, “Next time I see you in Cape Town, I’m going to kill you!”
The next day I went into town with anticipation of what might happen. When I got to the area where Hoppi’s group strolls, I saw a few of the kids and they just ignored me. A few minutes later I saw Hoppi and he whispered something to another kid who disappeared off to the side and then Hoppi started coming towards me.
Right before he reached me, the kid he had whispered to appeared again and handed Hoppi a butcher knife that he hid under his shirt. Right as he turned to come up to me, one of the other kids ran past me and whispered, “Ryan, runaway! He’s going to stab you!!”
When Hoppi came up to me and started swearing, I said, “I don’t have time for this right now” and I turned my back to him and walked off. I hoped that my turning my back to him showed him that I wasn’t scared that he was going to literally have to stab me in the back, though I actually thought that he just might.
He was moody for a long time after that, which forced me to go out and form relationships with other kids that I had not yet gotten a chance to meet. It ended up being positive because I realized that if that had not happened, it would have taken me longer to move out into new areas. Eventually Hoppi came around a bit, but he was not through testing me yet.
Everything went smoothly for a while and he would at least carry on decent conversations with me when we would see each other. He would occasionally try his luck, but over all everything was okay. At least, until another soup night.
We had stopped and were serving soup to another group. We were having a great evening and the boys were in top spirits. The good vibes were soon shattered by a yell coming from down the street, “JY, RYAN!! Jou ma se poes!!” (“Ryan! Your mother’s pussy!!”).
All the kids and the DTS students looked down the street to see who was yelling. There he was, leading a group of about twelve boys, and they looked like they were on a mission. I still to this day do not know why he was angry with me that night.
As they approached, he picked up a glass bottle and broke it. That is pretty much like saying “It’s on!!”
He came straight up to me and started swearing at me and then he started waving the broken bottle in my face and saying he was going to stab me.

Everyone was anxious to see how I was going to handle this. From the DTS students to the kids, all eyes were on me. You could have heard a pin drop.
Now, I don’t know what jumped into me next, and I don’t know if I would do it again (though I have on a couple of other occasions), but I just started talking before I realized what I was saying.
I took a step closer to him and I said, “Go ahead and stab me, but you better make sure you knock me out or kill me on the first one!”
He tried to call my bluff and he took a step closer and acted as if he was going to stab me in the face and he said that he really was going to stab me. I felt the wind of the broken bottle breeze in front of my face but I didn’t flinch and said, “Well, go ahead then! What are you waiting for?! Why don’t you quit talking and do it?!”
He got more frustrated and tried to call my bluff one more time by reminding me that he really was going to stab me. I got closer to him and said, “DO IT!!!!”
He finally got frustrated and went off to the side and stabbed another kid in the head. I felt sorry for the poor kid that he decided to vent his frustrations on!
He came up to me later that evening and when he started talking junk, I just picked him up on my shoulder and started spinning him around, like a professional wrestler. I would set him back down and he would dizzily try and gain his balance and then he would start laughing.
He finally gave up his attempts at intimidating me and just came to me with a defeated smile on his face and said, “You’re alright!” and from then on we had a good relationship.
Sure, he would still try his luck here and there but when I said no, he knew I meant it and he wouldn’t push it too far. He was a tough case to crack, but I finally managed to win over his respect. Respect definitely didn’t come overnight.
With some of the kids it was incredibly easy. Hoppi gave me a challenge but I am actually thankful for it and learned a lot out of it!
I learned that you don’t always have to do things “by the books”. I learned that I was the one that was coming to these kids and they didn’t have to prove themselves to me, but I had to prove myself, and my intentions to them. I learned that there is a fine line between showing too much fear and being too cocky. And I learned that respect does not come easily.
Sometimes you just have to hang in there, stand strong and not back down.

8 . Freedom

2008-11-11T04:54:00.001-08:00

Racism is an incredible phenomenon! It has literally torn apart nations and left them in utter devastation! Coming from the deep south in the States, I had seen my fair share of it before even stepping foot into South Africa.
It is hard to believe that in the day and age we live in there are still small minded people running around flying the rebel flag, with bumper stickers that say things like, “The South will rise again!”, but it is true. There are still people in these times that are ignorant enough to judge someone merely by the color of their skin.
That is what happened in South Africa for years, and still happens to this day.
For years, through the government of the Apartheid era, non-whites were oppressed and pushed down. Now, I am not one to dwell on the past, but I also strongly feel like the only way to move forward, is to first look back.
I have seen both sides. Some people want to dwell on the past and use it as an excuse to not move forward. Others, probably because of feelings of guilt, say that we should “forget about it and move on” because what happened happened and now it is over.
Yes, what happened did happen, but I feel it is far from over.
The residue of Apartheid is still present in Cape Town and in South Africa as a whole. It is maybe even more obvious when working with the street kids.
A “handout” mentality was developed and some have been subjected to depend on others for survival in an unhealthy way, and are not offered proper health care, education and other social services. What happened is devastating and it adds an extra dimension to the street kid problem.
Many of the kids feel like the white people “owe them”, and will even get angry sometimes if a white person does not give them money when they are begging.
Some will say that those days are over but I have seen people walking around in chains, though they have been “free” since 1994. The struggle is far from over. The sweat, blood, tears, sacrifice and determination of many people, from all races and social standings gave the people of this country the right to live in freedom and equality.
The status of freedom was fought for and won, but I heard something once that I will never forget. It is that freedom is not a physical state of being, but rather a psychological state of mind. True freedom cannot be given or taken away by anyone.
A person can be free living under an oppressive government or in jail, and at the same time a person can be bound living in the “free world”.

It is amazing to me to talk to the younger generations who don’t even know what Apartheid is. Things are starting to change. It has only been ten years. But ten years is not enough to make up for years and years of injustices and it will take years to rebuild the New South Africa.
I am proud to be able to take part in breaking the mindsets and mentalities of all the different races. To get funny looks from people when sitting on the streets talking with a group of street kids, to have white South Africans say, “You drive in THOSE areas?!” when we talk about me going into the townships, and to have some of the kids tell me that I am not like most of the white people they know.
These are all things that begin to free minds, even if it is one mind at a time.

9. Happy New Year’s!!

2008-11-11T04:53:00.001-08:00

My first few months in Cape Town were a learning experience in many ways. The communities that the street kids come from are all about a twenty to forty minute drive from downtown. This huge area of all the different communities is known as the Cape Flats.
Of course there are nice parts of these communities, but in general, those areas are known for being “rough”.
Since these are the areas the kids come from, I had to both get used to the areas and learn my way around them. I eventually did, and it came through just going into those communities and trying to find my way around and getting lost time after time again.
Some of the townships areas are extremely difficult to get around in because there are areas with just little, unofficial dirt roads, winding in and out of the shacks. You can drive and think you are on your way out only to zig-zag and end back up in the place you started in.
I got a crash course on finding my way around the communities on New Year’s Eve of 2001.
My friend Andrea was visiting from the States, and we went down into town to meet another friend of mine. Cape Town on New Year’s Eve is a really exciting, festive place to be. The air is filled with spirit and excitement!
Andrea and I were hanging with a group of kids on Long Street, waiting for my other friend to call when a German tourist approached us. I think the tourist thought I was some sort of drug lord or gangster because all the kids were around me talking to me and then right as she came up to me, Denzil, one of the kids ran up and handed me money (because I had to make a phone call and didn’t have any coins on me and he offered to go beg for some money for me).
The tourist said that she had a problem and wanted to know if I would be able to help. I told her I would definitely do what ever I could to help her.
She told me that she had just flown in from Germany and had not been able to exchange her money yet and needed to get out to some friends of hers, who lived in the Cape Flats. She said that she had talked to them and they said that they would pay whomever she could find to bring her out there.
She asked if I had any “connections” and I laughed and told her that I didn’t know about that, but I had a car myself and would be willing to drive her out there.
I left her with Andrea and the kids and I went to call my other friend, who was tied up and was not going to be able to meet us anyways. I came back to the group and told the German lady that we should probably call her friends and get directions.
Denzil reached in his pocket and handed me more money and we went to call her friends. They gave me directions and we walked to my car. The spontaneity of the whole situation only added to the excitement of the festive evening!
So around 9:00pm, me, Andrea, the German lady, and nine kids piled into my car and headed off for the N2. None of the kids that were in the car were from the specific area that we were going to but they all seemed to have a general idea of where it was.
I had NO clue.
I tried to follow the directions that were given to me but I really struggled. We turned off on the wrong turnoff a few times and had to turn around, but eventually after seeing the name of the area on a sign, we found our way.
The directions, once we got into the neighborhood, were much better. We found the house with no problem. When we got to the house, most of us got out of the car and a few kids waited in the car, to “look after it”.
We went in and to add to the randomness of the evening, her friends were Rastas and were just about to smoke ganja right when we showed up. They offered some to us and I declined and then they thanked us for our troubles and gave me fifty Rand for petrol, which was WAY more than what it cost me!
We said goodbye and then went on our way. As we were driving out of the neighborhood, I could tell that some of the kids seemed a bit nervous. One of them said, “Um, Ryan, we need to get out of here as quick as possible.”
I didn’t get excited or nervous but I did heed the advice of my little friend. The only problem was, I got a little turned around and went in the wrong direction.
We ended up driving into an area that is infamous for gangsterism and extremely dangerous at night. The kids all got really nervous and I knew that if the kids were scared, I should at least take it seriously.
I didn’t feel scared and just tried to always be aware of what was going on around me. Each of the kids, at different times, would think that they knew a way out and would begin to give me directions. A kid would lead confidently, thinking he knew the way, and I would follow the directions but as we would come into another area, I would see a defeated look on his face, and he would apologize and say that he had no clue where we were.
We would drive on long dark roads and then come into a township and I would twist and turn through the busy streets, full of people drinking and partying.
We drove around like that for almost two hours. Just about the time when all of the boys had tried their luck and had basically all given up hope of ever finding our way back to Cape Town, one of the boys recognized that we were in the area that he was from.
He got excited and started leading and directing me in which way to go. I didn’t get my hopes up because that was the same thing that had happened time after time before that. But, he proved to know where he was going because we ended up in front of a house and when they heard a car pull up the people inside came out. Sure enough, it was his mom.
Once again, it was something that only added to the randomness of the evening.
We talked with his mom for a while and she was happy to see her son. I asked him if he wanted to stay and he said he didn’t and wanted to go back to Cape Town. He gave his mom a hug and she said goodbye and thanked me for bringing him around, as if I did it on purpose, and I said it was my pleasure and we were on our way.
Now, he didn’t know the way back to Cape Town from there, but he knew the way back to Muizenberg, the area where I live, and from there I knew I could get us to Cape Town.
So he led the way and we eventually found ourselves in Muizenberg. I made my way to the highway that would take us back to Cape Town.
The boys were happy and excited that we finally knew where we were and where we were going, after almost three hours of driving around. They had enjoyed the whole evening and the adventure that it brought.
Right when I turned on the highway, we realized that it was almost midnight and we began our count down. We all counted down and at 12:00am we all yelled at the top of our lungs.
The sky filled up with red flares, as usual in Cape Town on New Year’s. The boys started shouting at every car that we passed, “HAPPY NEW YEAR’S!!!!!” and then they began singing. They started singing a famous fight song that the people used to sing during the Apartheid struggle.
As they were singing, I felt chills all over my body and my eyes filled up with tears. It was like something hit me, and I realized that there was absolutely nowhere else in the whole world that would rather be at that moment than right there with those kids. It was a great moment.
We sang and yelled the whole way into Cape Town. Then we drove around Cape Town and the boys continued to yell “HAPPY NEW YEAR’S!!”, at every single car we passed.
We drove around for a while and then I eventually dropped the kids off.
Andrea and I went home to go to sleep after a LONG night. That night meant a lot to me and something happened in my heart that is hard to put into words. I just had a realization that I was in the right spot and I was looking forward to spending the New Year with the kids. I also got a wonderful introduction to the communities that I would be frequently driving in for the years to come. I now know my way around those communities and I laugh at myself when I think of that night because today, I would have to try really hard to get myself lost in those areas.

10. Battle Against the Bunnies

2008-11-11T04:52:00.001-08:00

Sex is another huge part of street life. Coming to Cape Town, I knew that rape was common on the streets, with both boys and girls. I also knew that sexual activity was common sometimes even between the boys.
I also knew that some of the boys prostituted themselves out to men, but I thought it was a small minority that was involved in those acts. It was only after I had been in Cape Town for five months that my eyes were opened to the fullness of what was going on.
A friend of mine had come to visit me from the States, and one night I took her to a restaurant downtown where an African band was playing.
When we left the restaurant, we decided to walk around and see some of the kids. We saw a few of them and then started looking for a particular kid and could not find him anywhere.
When we asked the other kids where he was, they would just say, “He’s up there.” When we got “up there” we did not see him and another kid would say, “He’s down there.”
We walked up and down with a couple of kids looking for him but didn’t find him anywhere.
At one point, Reagan (eleven years old at the time), one of the boys who was walking around with us, made a passing comment that the kid was probably “on the mountain”, but he got shy when I asked him what he meant by that. I just dropped it because I could see it was making him uncomfortable.
We looked around a little longer but didn’t see the kid anywhere, so we started making our way to my car. The other two boys accompanied us.
Strangely enough, when we walked around the corner where my car was parked, the kid that we had been looking for that entire time was sprawled out laying in the middle of the side walk in a deep sleep, only about ten feet away from my car.
He had two button-up business man-type shirts thrown over him like a blanket. It seemed extremely odd.
I walked up to him and tried to wake him up but he wouldn’t budge. Worried, I shook him really hard, and he groggily opened his eyes, but they uncontrollably shut again. I shook him again and told him to move out from the middle of the sidewalk.
We helped him move up and against the wall of a building, out of the middle of the sidewalk.
He went back into a deep sleep and we all just sat on the pavement beside him. Reagan had a sober look on his face and I turned to him and said, “Reagan, can I ask you something?”
Reagan looked at me with a serious look in his eyes and said, “Anything!”
I asked him what was going on with the kid and he took a deep breath and began to tell me everything. He said, “He has been on the mountain with a bunny.” I asked him what a bunny was and he told me that it was an older white man that likes to have sex with little boys.
My heart sank into my stomach and I felt sick. I asked him why the boy was sleeping so hard and he explained to me that the particular bunny that he had been with likes to give the kid sleeping tablets and then when the kid is asleep, he does whatever he wants to them.
He explained to me how that bunny would buy a meat pie and a drink. He would then pick up the boy, drive up Table Mountain and let the boy eat the pie and enjoy the drink, in which he had put a sleeping tablet. When he was finished, he would drop the sleeping boy off somewhere in town.
My stomach was in knots and I felt myself getting sicker. He then began telling me how the whole thing works.
I asked him how many of the boys were involved and he started naming names. It was just about every kid I knew. He told me that there were tons of bunnies that pick up the boys and it happens on a nightly basis, but the most active time is the weekends.
He started telling me the ins and outs of it all and he would practically close his eyes when he was talking, almost as if he was just retelling what he had experienced.
The worst part was when I asked the next question, “So, how much do they pay the boys?” He looked up at me like it was a stupid question and said, “PAY?! You get a pie and a drink! Not money!!”
I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I wanted to puke. He said that some of the boys got paid for it.
I later found out that little Reagan was just speaking out of experience. He had only gotten food and a drink because he was new to the streets, but most of the boys do it for money and not just food and drink.
We talked for a while and then my friend and I drove home. On the way home I couldn’t speak. I felt all sorts of different emotions swirling around in my head like a heavy storm.
It was a long ride home.
About ten minutes away from my house, I broke down and started crying uncontrollably. I didn’t understand why any kid should be subjected to such behavior.
The next few weeks I went through a series of emotions. For about a week, I was extremely heartbroken over the whole thing. I would cry, anywhere over anything, and for no particular reason, which is very unlike me.
Soon after that, I felt an uncontrollable anger and I just wished to see one of these bunnies so I could beat him to a bloody pulp.
After that, my heart became hard. It was strange because right after my eyes were opened that night, I started hearing the boys talk about it. I realized that this whole thing is a secret of the streets. There is almost like an unspoken code, where the kids rarely talk about it and if they do it is only with each other. They actually even convince themselves that they don’t even do the acts. It is easier for them all to just approach the whole issue with total denial.
Around that same time, some other boys were going through some rough times and they would tell me about these types of experiences.
I found that my heart had turned totally hard and I could listen to the most graphic of stories and not feel anything. I soon realized that to properly deal with this situation I would have to come to a happy medium of those three extreme emotions of being totally heartbroken, extremely angry, and being hard, calloused and unfeeling.
I soon was able to do just that. I saw that it was important to stay compassionate and not become too hard, but it was also good to develop a certain degree of hardness so that you are not a walking emotional wreck. But a healthy degree of anger is just as important.
That anger against the injustice is the driving force that makes you not just sit with the knowledge that you have learned, but do something about it.
And that is just what I decided to do.
I began speaking to different people and seeing what is being done and what can be done to stop these things from happening. This was the beginning of what has turned out to be one of my biggest and longest on-going battles!!
I began getting information every chance I could from the kids. I didn’t want to force it, because it is such a sensitive topic, but some of the kids were painfully open and honest about the whole thing.
I started seeing all the different aspects that were involved. I learned that the majority of the bunnies are white, middle to upper class, middle-aged men. Some of them even married.
I also learned that the majority of the kids had done it at least once, but a startling majority of them do it on a regular basis. I struggled to understand why they would do such a thing.
Then I started to understand. Most of the street kids come from rough situations. Before they come to the streets most of them have already developed coping mechanisms to separate themselves from reality and difficult emotional situations.
This can come from being in a house with parents that drink until they come to the point where they yell and scream and even beat the children. If the kid does not learn how to cope before he comes to the streets, he gets a crash course when he pulls up into the harsh reality that the streets have to offer.
It is always sad to see the “new kid” go through the process of being “broken” when he first comes to the streets. He is raped, beaten, introduced to drugs to numb his pain and eventually his innocence is robbed, and his heart becomes hard.
They learn to repress their feelings and walk in denial about the emotions they cannot push down.
The kids that take part in sexual activities like these harden themselves, block it out, and go on day by day as if it never even happened.
The code of secrecy helps out with this. They go on, not only as if it doesn’t faze them, but also as if it never even happens. To hold in something like that is dangerous because one day, it will all come out.
The child is also convinced that he is not committing any crimes. He is not stealing cell phones, breaking into cars, robbing people, breaking into houses or even just begging for money.
The only person that he is hurting and violating is himself, and he has hardened himself to the point where he doesn’t even realize that.
The child in no way is the criminal, but actually the victim. If the child has hardened himself to that point, it has become an easy way for him to make a large amount of money in a short period of time.
Though they have “hardened” themselves it does obviously have an effect on them emotionally, sexually, and even physically.
Many of them become more withdrawn, more emotional and make inappropriate sexual gestures and comments more often. Their ideas of love and sex become warped and some even struggle with their own sexual identity.
Physically, sores may appear on their faces, hands and other places.
It is all around very damaging to the child and a child should never be put in a position where this is an option. In my mind, children are supposed to worry about who they are going to play with after school, who they want to be their friends, and other innocent things like this.
Making the decision of whether or not to go with a pervert to make money by performing sexual acts should never be a decision a child should have to make. It should not even be an option.
I know of children that have been used as young as six years old. All of this new information about the kids was troubling to me and not only did I learn more about how the kids were affected by it all, I also learned more about the bunnies.
I learned that there are organized forms and un-organized forms of this. Some of these bunnies may just get the idea and try it out once.
For others, they just do it every now and then, but others are “regular customers” and have quite a “professional” way of working.
For instance, they might drive by a certain point passing a child a few times. Then they would go and park on a desolate street, away from the ‘businesses against crime’ cameras, and the child would know to meet him there.
There are many individuals that “work” in different ways but in every case it is totally illegal.
Whether or not the child gives consent, it is absolutely illegal, not to mention wrong, to have sex or have any sexual contact with a minor (even arousing the child with words), and especially if the minor is given a form of “reward” or a sum of money.
With all of this information as ammunition, I started looking for answers to how I could begin to fight this battle.
I talked with my friend Faizel, who I knew had some connections with the police and the government. We looked into it a bit and saw that it was a really difficult thing to work with.
We talked to the police and they told us that it is very difficult to get a conviction in these cases. They said that they basically have to catch the guy in the act, which is extremely difficult, or get the kid within twenty-four hours of it happening and get a medical check up and evidence proving that the child had, in fact, been sexually abused.
Even with that, they still need DNA of the man somewhere in or on the child.
They told us that the mere testimony of a child was not enough and we should not even try to take a case forward if that is all we had. We saw that it was going to take more than just trying to do it case by case but we needed to try and get more of a grasp on how the thing works on a larger basis, even though majority of the men were just individuals and not organized.
We realized an investigation needed to be done.
We decided to approach the police’s intelligence unit about the whole situation and we scheduled a meeting with the head of crime intelligence.
Faizel and myself, along with the head of crime intelligence, the head of the child protection unit, a surveillance field officer, and two detectives sat down to try and figure out what could be done. I could see from the beginning that they were all intimidated by this whole topic, but they also seemed willing to help.
I don’t know if it was from my previous experience with police, but I was a bit sceptical of them all.
They decided to undergo a two-week investigation where they would look into the problem. We told them the different spots and areas in which these activities usually occur. We scheduled a follow-up meeting where they would inform us of their findings. The meeting was adjourned and we waited in excitement and anticipation for the follow-up meeting.
Two weeks rolled around and we went back to meet with the group.
I was astounded at their “discoveries”! Their so-called “investigation” consisted of the two detectives driving around on the two weekends with a digital camera. They would pull up to a group of kids, stop, hold the camera up and if the kids approached the car, they said that the kids tried to “sell themselves” to them.
They had a whole page full of digital pictures of several of the kids, all of whom I knew. The pictures were in no way a portrayal of the kids selling themselves but rather just kids posing for a photo.
I could not believe it!
One picture even had two boys holding up their dog and making him wave his paw. The detectives then tried to play it off and say that because the kids are “selling themselves” there is nothing they can do about it. They basically said, in more words, that they have more important things to investigate.
They tried to make the kids look like the criminals!! I was fuming!!
I questioned them on their investigation technique and I asked them specifically about the picture of the boys with the dog “So you are saying these two boys are trying to sell themselves?! Is the dog some kind of kinky sexual benefit? I find that hard to believe!”
I then went on to say that I felt like there is nothing more important than the life of the child and if the detectives say they have “bigger things” to worry about, then their priorities are messed up. I also informed them that even if a child “sells himself” it is still illegal for an adult to commit those acts with him.
I could not believe it!!!
To top it all off, the “more important” things were to investigate illegal fishermen, something that brings in a lot of money to the economy. I left that meeting frustrated and not knowing quite what to do.
Not too long after that, the Scorpions unit contacted us. The Scorpions, otherwise known as the Directorate of Special Operatives unit, is an elite unit that works under the National Prosecutor. They were formed to work on syndicates and big rings of crime.
They are detectives and prosecutors, so they investigate the crime, do the bust and then also take it to court themselves. They are the closest thing South Africa has to the FBI.
The Scorpions contacted us because they had heard about our struggles in finding support involving the whole situation. They had also heard about our meeting with the police so I think they might have even suspected some sort of police involvement in the whole thing, but that is just my own opinion.
They wanted to meet with us one night and get us to drive around with them, undercover, and show them the different active areas. We were not allowed to talk about them contacting us because this matter falls under police jurisdiction and they were worried that if the police heard about them getting involved, the police would try and stop them.
Plus, they are not really supposed to work on cases that are not proven rings of crime.
We were excited and hopeful because they had contacted us and we looked forward to meeting with them.
Faizel, myself, and a lady from another organization met them one Friday night. Travelling in three cars, we each rode around in a car with two Scorpions. We showed them the different areas and even sat and watched some of the kids for a while.
The funniest part was, even though I was in a car that was totally unrelated to me, with two men that I normally would not be with, and I was sitting low in the back seat with my face covered, except for my eyes, I was spotted by two kids. The two Scorpions could not believe it.
We passed by one older boys and he started shouting “Ryan!!” and waved his arms. The two Scorpions couldn’t believe that he had spotted me.
They turned quickly off of the street and went onto a back road that ended up leading back to that street. When we drove back by, the kid was standing there waiting and looking for the car. When we drove by him he chased after the car yelling, “RYAN!!” It happened again that night with another boy.
We drove around a little longer and then eventually met back up with the other two cars. They said that they would talk and then see what they could do from their side. They contacted us later and said that if we receive any information on particular instances and the kids were willing to testify, we could bring them to their office. We were excited and positive about that.
Not too long after that, one of the kids came to me with a particular instance. He told me about how three of his friends, who are daytime strollers, had been in Cape Town the day before and a white man came up to them and asked them if they wanted some food. They said yes and he told them that he would take them to McDonalds.
They went with him and then he went to the liquor store and bought some alcohol. He then told them that there was a McDonalds near where he lived and that he had a pool at his house and they could come over and swim and eat at his house. They were, of course, excited.
They went to his house, about a twenty-minute drive from downtown, and ate and then the man started giving them alcohol to drink. The boys drank and started to become drunk. The man started calling them, one by one, into his bedroom. He would order them to take off their clothes and he would start fondling them. He tried to get them to do the same with him and they refused.
He got angry at the smallest of the three boys and threw him into the pool. The kid hit his head on the bottom and it left a huge gash on his forehead. When he called the oldest of the three boys in, the boy got angry and hit the guy and they all ran away.
They felt like they had done something wrong so they were afraid to go to the police. That is why their friend approached me. I took their friend to the Scorpions office and we talked with one of them. He told me to try and get as much information as possible and bring them to the office the next day.
I managed to find the two younger boys and they showed me where the man lives. I took pictures of his house, I wrote down his address and I took pictures of his car and licence tags. I took pictures of the boys and especially the one boy’s injury, and I got their statements of what happened on tape.
Faizel and I went to the office the next day and gave it all to the Scorpion I had talked with the day before. He then said that all we needed to do was get the official statements of the three boys and he would call us back.
Faizel misunderstood what he meant and so he said we should pick up the boys and go to the child protection unit and get the statements. We found the kids and went to the child protection unit. We waited for a while and finally they started taking the statements of the kids. Right in the middle of it, Faizel got a call from one of the Scorpions who was furious to hear that we were at the child protection unit (a branch of the police).
She hung up with him and called me immediately. She asked me if I was with him and I said yes, and she said that we had blown the whole thing and that there was no way they could work with us anymore. They didn’t take that individual case forward and although they investigated the man a little bit, they did not get much on him. That was the last we heard from the Scorpions for awhile.
But I was not going to give up.
I then decided I would start doing my own investigating and then if I got enough information on an individual, I would just hand it over to the police. I started going out every night, driving up to the mountain, taking down the licence plate numbers of suspicious looking cars. I also tried to stake out and watch the kids.
The difficult part was trying to not be spotted by the kids. This made for some humorous times!
One evening, Faizel and I went out. I had borrowed a friend’s car and I wore all black clothes, with a black bandana over my face and a black beanie over my head. I looked like a ninja! The only thing showing was my eyes. We pulled up to a popular area for these activities to occur, near two gay clubs, and saw a guy talking to a kid.
We got out of the car. I was standing, with my back to one of the clubs, watching the man talking to one of the kids in the parking lot of a petrol station. He was making plans of some sort with the kid.
I just happened to glance behind me. The bouncer of the club and someone who appeared to be the manager were looking at me. The manager had just ended a conversation on his cell phone. I got a weird feeling so I met Faizel back at the car.
Right when we got in the car and started to drive off, the police screamed up with their lights on. They stopped in front of the club right as we were driving off and the bouncer pointed to our car.
We drove on and two police cars pulled up; one sped up and got in front of us and the other pulled up beside us and started forcing us off the road. They got out with their guns out, pointed at our car. They thought we were going to rob the petrol station. We explained what we were doing and that the reason I was dressed like that was because the kids would recognize me.
They thought it was funny and, fortunately, were able to just laugh at the whole situation and false alarm.
Faizel and I drove around a little more that night but didn’t really get that much information. It did however prove to be a memorable and exciting evening.
Since those early times we have seen these acts continue in Cape Town. Few of the bunnies have been caught and the ones that have, have always gotten off on easy sentences.
One case involved two brothers that were ages six and ten at the time. An owner of a video shop would let them come in, after hours, and watch movies. He would show them pornographic movies and then tell them to copy, with him, what they had seen on the video.
He did this on a regular basis. He was caught, convicted and less than a year later he was out and back in Cape Town. The boys have to see him in town on a regular basis.
There are other cases that we were informed about where the bunnies were “powerful” men, and because of their status, their cases would be dropped with no punishment.
With one of these, they even had a kid that had given graphic testimony of what this man had done to him. The difference with this man was that he would also do it against the will of the kids. He would invite them into his house and then lock the door and try and force himself on the children. He was also extremely violent and was known to hit the kids if they “did it wrong”. The case went forward and nothing happened to him and he is still a free man to this day.
We slowly built back contact with the Scorpions and one of them was interested in starting a unit that specifically deals with child sex offenders. They would mostly work on child trafficking but would also make time for the individual cases. We had a meeting about it and the slow process was underway.
To this day, we still have not heard much about what is happening with that special unit. They worked with us again on a case with a German man that had been caught with two boys.
One day I got a call from a police station about an hour away from Cape Town. They said that they had two boys there and a German man that had molested them. One of the boys had given them my number and they wanted to know if I could come to the station and bring the kids’ parents.
One of the kid’s mom is dead but I picked up his Aunt and we went to the police station. One of the boys had been with the man on several occasions and the man paid him more money every time. This time, the two boys went along with the man, and after they had done the sexual acts with him, he said he wasn’t going to pay them.
They escaped from him, managed to get to a traffic police officer and they were able to catch the man. They took the boys’ statements. Because the one boy’s guardian was not there, I had to read the statement and sign it as his guardian. It was the boy that had been with him several times and it made me sick to read the statement, with both the boy and the German man sitting in the same room as me!
After they had taken down both statements, we went to the doctor and he did the medical report. Late that night I drove the kids home.
The inspector told me that the case was weak and I found out that there is not actually a charge in South Africa for this type of sexual offence. Instead, they charge the perpetrator with indecent assault, which is an extremely weak charge.
The German sat in jail for a few weeks awaiting trial and then was able to pay bail once it was set. The kids called me and told me that they saw him on a daily basis in Cape Town and not only was he with other boys, but he had even tried to talk one of their friend’s into going with him.
I called the inspector telling him about what was happening, and he said that if we got statements from those kids, he could get the bail taken away. I made an appointment with him and the kids to meet on two different occasions but he didn’t show up for either.
I then decided, on my own, to get whatever information I could on the German. The boys gave me the make and model of the car he was driving and the license plate number. Faizel and I called the car rental place and got his address, which was incorrect, and his cell phone number.
We decided to try and find him and watch him for a little while. Faizel disguised his voice and called the guy and asked where he was and said he would like to meet with him. The German told him that he was at the Waterfront and even told him exactly where he could find him.
We went to the Waterfront and found his car in the parking lot and I parked close to it. Faizel called him back and said that he had gotten tied up and would call him later to set up another time to meet.
We waited for him to come out and then followed him all the way to the area he was living in. He first stopped at a popular pick-up point for gay men. They park their cars in a particular parking lot and then walk down onto the beach and perform sexual acts with each other. I figured that he lived nearby.
I told Faizel to call him and set up a time that they could meet in the week and in passing, ask where he lived. Faizel did it and the guy not only agreed to meet, but he told Faizel his exact address. We went later that night just to make sure and, sure enough, his car was parked there.
We then came up with an identity for Faizel as a business man from Saudi Arabia (he looks the part) who is also interested in doing sexual things with little boys, but had not been able to figure out how since he had been in Cape Town, and in inquiring about it, was given the German’s number.
We decided to go to the Scorpions because we didn’t want to get in trouble for entrapment and we wanted whatever information we got to be used against the German in court. They agreed to do a joint undercover investigation, with them, the police, and us.
They got all the appropriate papers done and then signed Faizel up as an undercover agent for that case, and we continued on with the first meeting between Faizel and the German.
The first meeting went well. The German admitted to doing things with young boys and even told the ages he preferred, which are 12 to 16. He also said that he not only picks up boys in town, but that he is also involved with an organization in one of the townships, and he gets boys from there too.
He seemed open to give more information at a more discreet location and asked Faizel if he would meet him on the following Sunday and they could go for a long drive and do some site seeing. Faizel agreed.
After the meeting we went back to the Scorpions’ office where we found out that not only was the recording device ineffective because they had hooked the microphone into the headphone hole, but also, they did not want Faizel to meet on Sunday because they felt it was “too soon”.
I disagreed and knew that if we cancelled that meeting it would cause suspicion. They made Faizel call him and reschedule it for the coming week, in which they also ended up cancelling. I was furious because I saw the case going down the drain.
Faizel was going out of the country on vacation for two weeks and things were going to totally stand still while he was gone.
He told the German that he had to go on a business trip and he would call him when he got back. Because of internal politics, when Faizel got back, the whole case basically fell apart. I was frustrated but not surprised.
These are just some of the many struggles I have had with this whole situation. There have been times when I have seriously considered vigilante-type actions against these pedophiles, but I realize that if I get arrested, I will not serve any good behind bars.
My mind cannot grasp what a grown man gets out of doing these sexual things with young boys. What bothers me the most is the damage that it does to the boys, whether they realize it at the time or not.
Though it has been difficult and I have seen little progress in the situation as a whole, I refuse to give up. I will not stand and watch as grown men rape and molest children, whether they are paying for it or not.
As long as I can speak, I will speak out against it. Even when all hope in finding a solution seems gone, I will continue to fight against this as long as I am in South Africa.

11. I Can Take a Hint

2008-11-11T04:51:00.003-08:00

The street kids are not always known for having the newest nicest shoes but they often take pride in the ones that they do have. Their feet also usually tend to not smell so nice, especially since they don’t wear socks the majority of the time. They sometimes give their shoes the smell test and when they get so unbearably smelly they will search for a new pair.
I have actually gagged at the smell of a couple of the boys’ feet. There have even been times when a kid is over at my house and will take off his shoes and the entire house will fill up with the aroma of his feet.
Anyway, one night I was standing talking to a boy named Elroy and we got on the topic of my shoes. He was just asking how long I had had them, and then asked me for the infamous smell test.
Now let me explain how I wear shoes. I buy a pair of shoes and then use them for everything: every day life, running, walking, I wear them to church, I wear them to boxing, I wear them everywhere, up to the point that they fall apart or smell too bad to wear anymore.
The shoes I wore at the time, were pretty much at that point! I thought Elroy was joking but when I saw that he genuinely wanted to smell my shoe, I willingly took it off and held it up for him to smell, telling him to “watch out” at the same time.
For some reason he didn’t possibly think that my shoes could smell and didn’t believe me. He took one huge whiff and changed his mind fast! I have never seen a kid make such a face!
He even gagged and started making a noise as if he was throwing up to show that he was totally disgusted. He dramatically went on for several minutes and when he finally gained his composure, he politely told me that it was time for me to get a new pair of shoes.
I found it quite humorous that a street kid was telling me that my shoes stunk and that it was time for me to get some new shoes.
I can take a hint! And I did. Not long after that I got a new pair of shoes.

12. The System

2008-11-11T04:51:00.001-08:00

“Woman hold her head and cry, because her son had been shot down in the street and died, just because of the system.”

These are the words of Bob Marley in his song Johnny Was. The “system” is an abstract word that is made up, in the natural, of many different elements, which can either positively or negatively affect those that live under it. In Cape Town, many of the street kids become victims of the system, entering into it innocently at a young age, only to be sucked in and led astray.
They become familiar with the way the system works and they use it to their advantage, playing off the conflicts between different organizations and going in and out of the different facilities. It seems to be fun and exciting for a young child but when that young child grows up, loses his or her cuteness and is stuck with the harsh reality that it might now be “too late”, they have to fight even harder to try and make something of their lives.
I have seen this over and over again. The kids have run away from home, been in and out of every shelter and home in Cape Town, in and out of the different jails and juvenile facilities, and always head back to the streets. Then they come to the point where they are tired of that kind of life, and all of their options are used up. I had my first real taste of this in January of 2001.
I was in town one day and I saw a twelve year old kid named Daniel. I had known him for a while and he was normally playful and happy, but that day he looked miserable.
After talking to him for a few minutes and not getting much response, he eventually told me about some terrible experiences he had gone through the night before. He said he just wanted to go home, and I agreed to take him. He explained to me that he lives with his foster mother, who had taken care of him for most of his life. He had run away because she yelled at him all the time and beat him a lot.
We drove to his foster mother’s home and I was staggered at her response to Daniel. She totally ignored him but acted extremely excited to see me, someone she didn’t even know.
I told her that Daniel had been in Cape Town and that he wanted to come home. She said it would be okay but still didn’t pay much attention to him.
This was the same time that my friend was visiting from the States and we were going to go do some site seeing and I asked if it would be okay if Daniel came with us and that we would bring him back that evening. She said it would be fine.
We had a great day and then when we went to drop him back off, he didn’t want to get out of the car. I think he had remembered why he had run away in the first place. He also didn’t want to go back to Cape Town.
He finally thought that the better of the two would be to stay with his mom and I told him that if he had any problems, he should call me or come to my house because I didn’t live too far away.
Sure enough, the next morning I had a knock on the door. It was Daniel. His mom had been terrible to him the night before and refused to give him food, but she and his little sister ate in front of him. I told him not to worry and that he could stay at my place until I could find a place for him to stay.
I had no clue how difficult it would be. Because it was the holiday season, most of the social workers of the homes and shelters were not even at the organizations. It was difficult because not only was I trying to look for a place for him to stay, I was also looking after him.
It was an eye opening experience and I learned a great deal from it! It was different from hanging out with the kids on the street. I was responsible for him. We had a good time but there were a few times when we butted heads.
It would start out as small thing that I would confront him on and because of the ways he had learned to deal with conflict, he would throw a temper tantrum and want to run away. I would tell him that he was welcome to leave but I would not let him go until he calmed down and talked about it. He struggled with that concept for a short while but got the hang of it after a while.
Eventually it got to the point, after he threw some fits on a couple of occasions, when he learned to sit and talk and not get so worked up so quickly. I remember writing my mom and dad an email during the second week Daniel was staying with me. I told them what an eye opening experience it was for me and I thanked them for everything that they had done for me, and for how patient they were with me.
I said something to the extent of, “Thank you for all those times I might have seemed ungrateful and unthankful. I am sorry for all those times I gave you such a hard time and I now understand what you were talking about when I would get upset with something and you would say, ‘One day when you have your own kids, you will understand!’ I now do understand!”
After two weeks of running into brick wall after brick wall, I finally was able to get him into Beautiful Gate, even though he was older than the kids that we normally take in.
After all of that, he stayed at Beautiful Gate for about a week and then ran away, to go back into Cape Town. It was sad because I had seen, in the time that he had stayed with me, that he had a lot of potential. He was just a kid that seriously needed a lot of personal attention, and in a home with other boys it is hard to give that kind of attention. That is where the system fails many of these kids in a big way.
Not too long after that, he met up with some gangsters downtown. They used him as a look-out boy. They broke into a house, robbed it, and raped the lady in the house. They then tried to kill her by stabbing her, but were unsuccessful.
They got caught, and Daniel, along with the gangsters, got arrested and charged with breaking-and-entering, rape and attempted murder.
I visited Daniel in the juvenile prison and he said that he didn’t realize what they were going to do and if he got out of jail, he was going to go home and stay home. The gangsters thought that Daniel had given a lot of information and they promised to kill him when they got a chance.
He stayed in the juvenile facility for a while and then he managed to run away. That facility is notorious for being easy to run away from.
He came straight to me and I called the court to ask what could be done. They said that if his foster mom agreed to allow him to stay at her house, they would give him house arrest.
We went to her and explained the situation and she agreed and went with us to court to make it official. He stayed there for about a month. In that time he had to appear in court on several occasions and I would pick him and his foster mother up and we would all go together.
She was still just as rude to him but he hung in there because he knew that there were no other options for him. He finally couldn’t take it anymore after she beat him one night and he ran over to my house.
I managed to get him in a shelter, and I informed the courts about the change. He would only have to stay there for a week because what was supposed to be his last court case was at the end of that same week.
When I went to pick up his mom the morning of the case she told me that she was not going to go and that she never wanted to see him again. I couldn’t change her mind so I went and picked up Daniel and we went to the court case without her.
During the case, when they asked Daniel, “where is your legal guardian?”, he turned around and pointed to me. The whole courtroom turned around and looked at me in confusion. The magistrate asked me to step forward.
I told her about the whole situation and how his mother had refused to come to the case. The magistrate asked me if I would agree to be his legal guardian for court purposes only. I explained to her that I would be glad to but that I could not be responsible for him outside of court.
I explained that he was staying in a shelter and if he was in court, I would also be there. She said that that was all that she needed from me and I signed the papers as his legal guardian.
They postponed the case for another month and when I went to pick up Daniel for the next court date, he had run away from the shelter the night before.
I didn’t see him after that for a long time but at one point I did get a call from another court and they informed me that he had another case against him. I had no clue where Daniel was and I was worried because the gangsters were still after him and the case was taking longer because Daniel had run away, which was only agitating the gangsters further.

He ironically popped up in town one night, almost a year later, on the same week that the other gangsters were let out of jail. I had already heard that they had been looking for him and had just seen them right before I saw Daniel.
When I bumped into him, without even greeting him I asked him if he knew who was in town. His faced turned white when I told him and he said that he had been staying in a shelter and had to come to court that day and had missed the last train. I told him to meet me at a specific place later and I would take him back to the shelter where he was staying.
About an hour later, when I pulled up to the spot where I had told him to wait, he was sitting there looking extremely nervous.
I took him back to the shelter where he was staying, which was only a temporary place for him. Since then, he has remained off the streets and out of town but has hopped around from place to place. He was actually even living on the streets in the area that I live in for a while but got into another shelter soon after that.
Daniel is a kid that does not have a stable home to go to, so he has spent his whole life moving from the streets to the shelters to the juvenile jails and back to the streets again. The open-door policy at all of the shelters makes it easy for these kids to just run away when things don’t go their way. The lack of involvement of individuals working in social services makes it all the easier for kids to walk away and the lack of follow up by the juvenile judicial system lets the kids get away with practically anything.
We can’t really blame the kids. They have just adapted to their environments and we are the ones that have allowed them to develop these runaway defense mechanisms by allowing them to continue running back to the streets. Daniel is just one example of a child of the system. In my time here I have come across many similar situations.
In January of 2002, I had five kids approach me wanting to come off the streets. I struggled to get places for them because they all fell into the same age group of around thirteen and most places for older boys won’t take them because they are too young, and most places for younger boys will not take them because they are too old. I ended up only being able to find a spot for one out of the five of them.
The weak structure and the system here have been incredibly difficult to work with and against. Organizational politics and lack of government care and involvement only helps to perpetuate the system.
Eventually someone has to stand up and say that they will no longer allow kids to throw away their lives! We have to stand up and not allow kids to make decisions that they are not capable of making, such as living on the streets and being in charge of themselves. We have to take back the role of adults and allow the children to take back the role of being children again. We cannot continue to allow this generation to become children of the system.

13. Refreshing Times

2008-11-11T04:50:00.001-08:00

In the two weeks that Daniel stayed with me, I didn’t get to go to the streets that much and was stressed out by not being able to find a place for him to stay. The one day I did manage to make it into town and I didn’t see the kids anywhere.
I remembered that not too long ago they had shown me a water reservoir located downtown where they often go to swim. I had only been there once and they tried to get me to swim and I told them I couldn’t because I had on jeans.
Because I didn’t see the boys anywhere that day, I decided to go look at the “dam”, as they called it. Sure enough, there they were. There were about twenty to thirty of them there, young and old.
They were happy to see me and when I jumped the fence they immediately wanted me to also join them and swim. It was a hot day and I really wanted to take them up on their offer but, I had on jeans again. I declined, but this time, they were not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.
An older gangster walked up to me and told me that I had to swim. I explained my predicament to him but before I could think twice, he took off his pink and purple striped boxers that he had been swimming in, which was all he had on, and handed them to me. He told me that I could borrow his shorts.
I could not get myself to turn down this nice gesture so I took the boxers from the naked gangster.
I went in the bushes and changed into them. The boys became so excited when I walked out of the bushes ready to swim. I felt a little ridiculous with my white legs showing because of the shortness of the pink and purple striped boxers, but the cheers of the boys made me soon forget about it.
There was a huge drop off that the kids jump off of and they walked with me to the edge. I pretended like I was scared and that I wasn’t going to jump and I walked back to the bushes as if I was going to put my jeans back on. The kids were incredibly disappointed.
All of a sudden, I turned around and ran for the edge, and I dove off. As I glided into the cold refreshing water, I felt more than just physical refreshment. I also felt like all of the stress that I had been feeling was being washed off in the water.
As I emerged to the surface I could hear the cheers and clapping of all the kids. I wiped the water out of my eyes and looked up to see all the kids standing on the edge of the drop off, cheering for me. They then started jumping in with excitement and swam out to me. I thought they were going to drown me with excitement when they got out to me.
We swam all afternoon and had a great time. It was an incredible experience for me. At the end of the afternoon, I returned the boxers to the gangster, and I went home, feeling totally refreshed and renewed.

Some of the most amazing times I have had with the kids have been totally spontaneous situations. I can also always count on them to make me feel better if I am down.
People have worried about me before saying that I “work” too much and that I am going to burn out. But for me, it is different. It is hard for people to understand. I get life from hanging out with the kids.
Many times, I have been in hard situations, and really had no one to turn to for advice or comfort and then I get around the kids and I feel better. I am sure that I have given the kids something over the years, but I am also very sure that they have given me just as much if not more. I have been privileged to get to know the kids in this way and I wish that everyone could experience them and get to know them in the way I have, and not just as these hardened little dirty street kids.

14. What a Gas

2008-11-11T04:49:00.002-08:00

One day I came across a boy named Aviwe who was huddled over a drain. He was shaking and he didn’t look good at all. He is normally a very happy and hyper kid so I knew that something was wrong.
I was on the way to a meeting with the police so I took him with me and he slept in the office during the meeting. When we finished the meeting he still looked very bad and felt awful so I took him to the hospital.
We sat in the waiting room for a while. Aviwe was in intense pain the entire time. Different things ran through my mind of what could possibly be wrong. It could be a stomach ulcer, appendicitis, he could have food poisoning, and the list of terrible sicknesses went on in my head. They finally called us and we went back to see the doctor.
The doctor asked him the normal questions about what he had eaten and his general health and then began his check up. He began to press Aviwe’s stomach, asking him if “it hurt there”, and then he must have pushed the magic button because Aviwe passed gas.
He was immediately relieved and back to his normal self and pleased with the excellent job of the doctor. So, it wasn’t an ulcer, appendicitis or any other bad disease, but rather a bad case of gas.
The doctor just prescribed him with some anti-gas pills and we were on our way. It was a rather easy cure and VERY funny!

15. Street Doctor

2008-11-11T04:49:00.001-08:00

Stab wounds, security-dog bites, burns, scars from police brutality, gashes from flying objects (such as bricks or metal stakes), sliced bottoms of feet from stepping on broken glass, chipped and rotten teeth. Injuries are VERY common with the street kids.
These listed above are just some of the more common ones. The story of ten year old Jason is just one example of how the kids damage themselves. Apparently he ‘ran his head into a flying metal stake’ thrown by a friend. He swears that it was only an accident and that the other kid didn’t mean to do it.
Like I said, these injuries are quite common and I have seen my share of them! One thing that has amazed me is that, one way or another, the kids always seem to make it to a government hospital or clinic where the treatment is free, whether they are taken by a friend or just manage to get there by themselves.
The other common thing that happens is the kid’s lack of follow up. They will go and get treatment, but then not necessarily follow through with it and sometimes their wounds end up in worse shape than when they started.
With Jason, he went the first time, and sat in the waiting room for a very long time and got impatient and left. Then realizing the next day that he should have stayed, he returned. Because
it had been over 24 hours since the accident had occurred they could no longer stitch it up for fear of it becoming an abscess. So instead, he was supposed to get it cleaned out every day and then return in one week to get it properly stitched.
However, when he asked me for help the only part that he remembered was that he had to go back in one week’s time to get it stitched. He totally forgot, or didn’t even understand from the beginning, that he had to go every day to get it cleaned.
When I took him to the doctor they informed me that he was supposed to have come every day and that they could no longer stitch it up. I then just had to take him to get it cleaned out every day for more than a month, until his wound healed.
I had another great example of this during that same month. At that point I had been living in Cape Town for about a year. Another boy, Donnie, probably around the same age as Jason also had trouble following up with his injury. He had been beaten up by the cops and had gone to the doctor where they gave him stitches for one of the cuts over his eye.
This had happened over a month ago and he had never returned to get the stitches removed. So one day while I was talking to him and a few other boys, I noticed that the wound had healed as much as it could but was starting to get scabby and red because the stitches should have been removed a long time ago.
He complained that he wanted them out and I joked with him saying that I would pull them out, as I joke when they complain about sore teeth. Usually they say, “No way!!” or something to that effect and the thought of me trying to “fix them up” is enough to make them want to go to the doctor or dentist.
In this case, it didn’t seem to work that way. Donnie was so annoyed with the stitches and so ready for them to come out that he said, “Ok!” and he pushed his face closer to me as if he was ready for me to just take the stitches out right then and there.
I decided to play along with it for a second and pulled out the scissors of my Swiss army knife to kind of scare him away from the idea of me taking out his stitches. I lunged the scissors towards his face in a cutting motion, hoping he would back down.
To my surprise, he closed his eye and pushed his face closer to my hand and assumed the “ready position”. I felt that I had taken it so far that by not taking out his stitches I would be letting him down so... OK, I had never removed stitches before, but I did watch very carefully as my doctor removed the stitches in my arm the summer I cut myself with hedge clippers, so at least I wasn’t going into it totally “uneducated”.
I just said a quick prayer in my head and started snipping. I successfully removed all the stitches, without hurting him I might add.
After I finished, it really was a huge reward to see his face and to hear him thank me over and over again. He seemed a bit shocked. The funny thing is that he wasn’t shocked that I actually “knew” how to remove stitches, but it was more because I DID remove them, right there on the street for him. It really meant a lot to him and it is certainly another situation that I will never forget!!
His wound is totally healed and there isn’t even a scar. Since that first experience my little Swiss army knife, that was a gift from a good friend, has come in handy over and over again. I have removed hundreds of stitches. The most I have ever removed in one sitting was with a boy that had fallen out of a train. He had cuts and gashes ALL over his body. I lost count that day at around thirty stitches!

16. Let’s Scrap

2008-11-11T04:48:00.002-08:00

Life on the streets is sporadic and spontaneous! The money made today, is spent before tonight. Live for the day, and let tomorrow worry about itself. In the same way, the social behavior of the kids is just as erratic.
Kids will move from group to group. They will be enemies one day and best friends the next, and vice versa. A fight can break out over the smallest thing and weapons will be pulled out and objects will be picked up and they will fight as though it is the last fight they will ever fight.
You might come back ten minutes later and find the two bloody kids, who had just been fighting, sitting arm in arm laughing and talking as if they were the best of friends. That was the amazing part for me! They are ready to fight at the drop of a hat, but their capacity to forgive is amazing.
It took me a while to get used to this aspect of street culture, but I learned quickly. I have broken up hundreds upon hundreds of fights, and I learned which ones to step into and which ones to leave be. This only came from trial and error.
I remember one of the first fights I ever broke up. It was in the first week I had moved back to Cape Town, in August 2000. I had gone to the train station to find Desmond, a kid that I had

become close to. I found him and we were standing there talking and then all of the sudden, out of the clear blue, Anthea, a street girl, ran up to him and started choking him and punching him in the face.
I didn’t realize that it branched out of something that had happened right before I came. I was stunned.
Now, let me just quickly say, I would rather go against some of the roughest gangsters in town before going against a street girl, because they can be ruthless. I tried to pry Anthea’s hands off of Desmond’s throat and I was eventually successful. She ran off, only to return a few second later with a huge wine bottle.
She threw it at Desmond and then ran towards him. He dodged the bottle but it crashed on the ground, echoing throughout the train station. Before I knew it, Anthea had her death grip on him again.
Finally, some station security guards came and split them up. To my surprise, they walked them out of the station, faced them towards each other and said, “If you want to fight, you can fight out here.” I jumped in between them before Anthea could get to Desmond again.
She would move one way, and I would move with her. We went back and forth with this dance for a while and then she picked up an empty coke can and tried to hit Desmond, reaching over my head, the whole time saying, “Get out of the way Ryan! I don’t want to hurt you!!”
She accidentally gave me a hard blow to the head with the coke can and was so shocked that she totally froze and started apologizing. She walked away in embarrassment.
I thought the fight was over. Desmond and I started walking away when all of the sudden Anthea appeared again, this time with the back up of an older gangster.
He walked up to Desmond and punched him a couple of times across the face. I tried to convince him to stop but that only turned his attention and anger towards me. He started strutting in my direction as if he was going to also teach me a lesson.
Just about the time he had almost reached me the security guards showed up again and arrested all three of them. Poor Desmond was bleeding, crying and confused. Anthea was still yelling and screaming and as they led them all away, the gangster looked at me and told me that the next time he saw me in town he would kill me.
The fullness of his words resonated in my head. Wow, my first death threat! A kid that was standing nearby watching the whole thing came up to me and reprimanded me. I will never forget his words.
He said, “Ryan, I don’t ever want to see you break up a fight again. You have to understand how we live. One minute we fight, the next minute we are friends again.” He then reassured me that all three of them would be friends again the next day. I didn’t believe him.
The next day, I decided that it was best to tend to the death threat as soon as possible, so I went to find that gangster to try and settle things. To my absolute shock, I not only found him, smiling and greeting me as though nothing had ever happened, but he was standing there with none other than Demond and Anthea. They all seemed to be best of friends.
They told me they sorted out their differences and everything was over now. I could hardly believe it!
That was one of my first times to break up a fight and I learned a good lesson out of it. I learned that it is just a part of the way that these kids live and I need to respect it to a certain degree. Now, that doesn’t mean that I would sit there and watch two kids kill each other, but I also learned how important it is for me to have the respect and relationship with the kids, before I jump into the middle of a battle.
That first blow to the head with a coke can in that first situation is only one of two times that I got hurt breaking up a fight. And that is out of hundreds of them. It got to the point to where I had built up enough respect that if I stood in between the two kids that were fighting, they would stop because they didn’t want to hurt me and then we could talk things through. This of course did make for some pretty funny situations.
A good example of one of these times also happened outside the station. I had a new volunteer from Beautiful Gate with me and was showing her around town. She had just come from Holland and she wanted to see what it was like on the streets.
When we got to the train station, we stood and talked with a group of kids. An argument broke out between two boys, Gabriel and Tino. It got heated when Tino hit Gabriel across the face and Gabriel pulled a six-inch butcher knife from his pants. He started chasing Tino around the grassy area outside of the station.
While he was running he was swinging the knife in a hacking motion, like the killers always do in old horror movies. Tino made an escape and disappeared into the station and Gabriel came back and stood with the group.
The Dutch girl looked a little shaken up by the whole event and I knew that it was far from over and expected Tino to come back for revenge.
I talked to Gabriel, who was panting heavily and got him to settle down and put the knife away. Right about that time, Tino came strutting around the corner with a huge rock in one hand and a wooden pole in the other.
Gabriel, once again, drew his sword. I started talking to them both before Tino had reached us. There they stood on either side of me, yelling at each other. They kept asking me politely to get out of the way and I refused, saying there was no way I was going to allow them to hurt each other like that.
Finally, Tino thought he saw an opening and tried to swing the pole for Gabriel’s head. I don’t really know how it happened but my ‘ninja’ instincts must have kicked in and I reached up and caught the pole. I immediately looked over at Gabriel for the counter attack and sure enough he was about to swing his knife.
I managed to catch his wrist and stop the motion. Now here I stood holding the pole in one hand, the wrist with a knife attached to it in the other hand, and I was prying them apart from each other with my body. This is where it got funny.
Tino tried to hit Gabriel with the rock but before he could, I somehow managed to kick the rock out of his hand. Then I managed to pry the pole and the knife out of their hands.
After I obtained possession of the weapons I joked with them that if they didn’t stop, I would stab them both! They laughed and we talked through their problem and they calmed down, for the moment.
The Dutch girl was pretty shaken up. We stood there and talked for a few more minutes when all of a sudden the argument started up again. When they had calmed down after the first bout, I had given the knife back to Gabriel, so of course, he pulled it out again.
This was the funniest part for me. The Dutch girl was extremely scared at that point and there was a smaller kid that was standing there watching the whole thing. He is small, but he is about sixteen and has been in Cape Town for eight years or more, and is one of the hardest kids I know.
He was not fazed a bit by the whole situation and just continued to emotionlessly watch the spectacle while huffing on his thinners. The Dutch girl, probably trying to comfort herself, came over to him and said, with a shaky voice, “Don’t be scared!! It will be OK!!!” His reaction was classic! He just kind of looked up at her with a kind of “whatever” expression and turned his attention back to the fight.
I broke it up quickly and we fully talked through the problem that time. I then had to attend to the poor traumatized Dutch girl.
Another memorable time was with two boys that had gotten into a pretty bad brawl. One Friday night I was sitting in a restaurant with a friend eating supper when I got a call from another lady who also works with the street kids. She was at her house and had just gotten a phone call from a group of kids in town that were a bit frantic because two of the boys had stabbed each other.
Fortunately, I was still in town and was able to check out what was going on. They were at a private hospital, so I went there to see what the story was.
When I got there, part of the group was outside and they told me that the two boys were inside. I went in to check out the situation and spoke to a doctor. Because the hospital where they were was a private one, the doctors had only stabilized them and stopped the bleeding but they were waiting to be transferred to a government hospital.
One of the boys had been going into convulsions on arrival and the other one had been bleeding profusely. They were waiting for the ambulance so I told them that I would take them with my car. The two boys got into my car and immediately started to argue.
I turned around with a very stern voice and look on my face and told them that they were not going to fight anymore. They had never seen me in such an authoritative role so they were both extremely surprised and a little scared that I might “pull over” as an agitated father would on a road trip.
They didn’t say another word until we got to the hospital. The story came out that they were just high on glue and had gotten in a little argument over a game and ended up stabbing each other with broken bottlenecks.
The one boy, Bobbie, had about a four inch stab on his neck and the other, Sipumle, got hit on a cut that still had the stitches from a previous injury, so the area around the old wound was swollen up. They both had minor cuts and scrapes here and there.
When we got to the government hospital we didn’t even have to wait and got to go straight back, which is probably one of the few times I have ever gotten such quick service. They immediately started cleaning and stitching them up.
When they had both been seen they were sitting beside each other but they were still angry and wouldn’t even look at each other. Now this is the part that amazed me. All of a sudden, Sipumle pulled a lollipop out of his pocket, bit it in half and gave the other half to Bobbie.
He didn’t say anything, or give a hug, or a big smile, but it came from his heart and Bobbie knew what he was saying. That simple act was an apology and a “please forgive me”. Bobbie accepted and from that point on they both forgot completely about what had happened and forgave each other. It was almost as if it had never happened.
They immediately began laughing and talking again. It was an amazing lesson for me. So many times, we hold grudges for hours, days, even years over little things, and they stab each other and a few hours later they are best friends again. It really made me think!
I have learned so much from the spontaneity of street life. I have definitely become an expert ‘fight-breaker-upper’, at the very least. There really is a lot we can learn from these kids. So many times, we will have a problem with someone and not be straight with them. We will hold in the grudge or make ‘round-about’ remarks, without really confronting the real issue.
In comparison to that, I think I would rather someone just come up to me with a knife and tell me exactly what their problem with me is. I am not saying it is good to fight over every little thing but I do think there is something to learn from it.
But beyond that, something that has stuck with me on a deeper level is the kids’ capacity to forgive and even forget. We can all take a lesson from a couple of bloody kids that had fought, sorted out their problems and then sat with their arms around each other, talking, laughing, and bleeding on each other.

17. That Bugs Me

2008-11-11T04:48:00.001-08:00

Lice, bed bugs, ringworms, weird kind of termite-like bugs, and scabies; I have conquered them all. These are all things that street kids are in constant battle with, and I have also had the opportunity to share it with them. I am actually fortunate that I have not had them more than I have.
I have actually been extremely fortunate. Let’s see… I had lice and bed bugs once each. A simple cutting of the hair and washing of the sheets worked fine for both.
Ringworms I have had on a couple of occasions. Once I had two huge ones on my face. The only thing I could remember every time I looked in the mirror was how my mom told me, when I was little, that if you pick your nose and eat your boogers, you would get ringworms. That is the very reason I stopped that, at a young age I might add. All I knew was that I had definitely NOT gotten those ring worms from eating boogers!
On a couple of occasions I have had this weird kind of boil-like things appear on my hand. I still have no clue what in the world they were. They kind of looked like a pimple that was exposed to some sort of radioactive chemicals or something. I still have a scar on my hand from one of them.
The weird termite-like bugs had to be the funniest! I actually call them homeless bugs because they are quite common in the
blankets of homeless people. I have no clue what class they are but they bear a striking resemblance to termites. They are extremely passive bugs though. They don’t bite or cause trouble; they just like to hang out in your blanket and eventually your hair.
I was intimately introduced to them when one of the kids stayed at my house one night because I had to take him to the hospital the next morning. The bugs must have decided they were tired of him and that they were going to move on and stay with me.
I tried to vacuum them up, and thought I got them all. Well, I didn’t. A few days later I felt something on my forehead. It felt like a drop of sweat. I tried to wipe it off, but to my surprise, it was a homeless bug! I had long hair at the time and they had nested in it.
It was a pretty funny and embarrassing thing, at times, to be talking with someone and then feel something on my forehead and then see a look of horror in the person’s eyes as they try and figure out why I had bugs crawling out of my hair and onto my forehead. Fortunately, after a few months, they must have gotten tired of me because the just went away.
The worst thing I have EVER experienced is scabies!!! Oh my word!!! I had scabies in the summer of 2002 and it was awful. It was truly one of the most terrible things I have ever had!
There was a bad breakout of them amongst the kids that summer. Scabies burrow under your skin and it makes these red dots appear that eventually turn into huge rashes. They can only burrow in areas where they have something to push against so the armpits, waist line, bases of fingers and pubic areas are the common areas that are affected.
I didn’t even realize what I had for a couple of months so I assumed it was fleas or bedbugs. When I finally realized that is was actually scabies, I had already developed an extremely bad case. I spent MANY nights awake, because that is the time that they are the most active and it itches even more.
I have never itched like that in my life!! There were times when I felt like cutting off my skin! I went to the pharmacy to get medication and I went home to apply it. After I had evenly smeared it over my whole body, it started to feel like it was burning my skin off.
I have a pretty high tolerance for pain but I have never felt anything like that before! It literally felt like acid eating away at my skin. I tried to wash it off and the water seemed to make the pain increase.
I washed with soap as my skin continued to burn and after about fifteen minutes it finally stopped. I laughed because I was supposed to keep that stuff on my skin for twenty-four hours and I couldn’t even make it for a few minutes. I called the pharmacist who said, “Oh, yeah. Some people’s skin is incredibly sensitive to it.” Thanks for letting me know!
I finally had to wait for some medication to come in the mail that my mom had sent me from my doctor in the States. It took me a couple of months but I eventually got rid of them.
Scabies were terrible and I don’t think I would wish them even on my worst enemies but when all is said and done, I survived them, along with all the other strange creatures I have been a home for.
I have conquered them all and now I have funny stories to tell my grandkids. At least now I can say, “Been there, done that”, I got the T-shirt… and I washed it!!

18. Steps Backwards

2008-11-11T04:47:00.001-08:00

Over the years I have met hundreds of kids. I have seen them come on and off the streets, in and out of jails, homes, shelters and even their own communities. Though it has just been a few years, I have seen some of these kids grow up before my eyes.
I have seen some of them go from being small boys to young men. I have seen some of them move on and succeed, but most of them have remained on the streets.
It is extremely hard to see an older boy on the streets. I look at him and remember the young, innocent, kid that he was a few years back, with his whole life before him and so much potential. One of the saddest such situations was with a boy that I met all the way back when I was on my DTS.
Andre, thirteen years old at the time, would come into downtown with a group of three other boys and they would perform for money. One of their mothers had made them matching outfits and one of them would play the drum as the other three did tricks and danced.
They made a lot of money because people respected their creativity. Every night they would return home with the day’s earnings. Andre was an incredibly intelligent boy but had had a falling out at the school he had attended and they kicked him out. I watched as Andre slowly got sucked into the street life.
He started by spending weekends in Cape Town. Instead of going home, he would just sleep in town from Friday and then he would go home Sunday afternoon. From there he started strolling in Cape Town permanently and refused to go home.
I talked with him about going home and finally convinced him to at least visit. I took him to his house and wondered why he was hesitant. I soon found out.
When we got to his house, his mother was in the yard. When we approached her, she looked up from the laundry she was hanging only once, then looked back down and started screaming profanity in Afrikaans like, “Why did you bring this piece of trash here? Take him back wherever you found him! I don’t want him!”
I had no clue what to do. I tried to talk to her but she was extremely harsh. I could tell that she was not all together there and was possibly a little sick or psychotic. Andre and I went back into town and I apologized for talking him into going home. Surprisingly, he said he was happy anyway. He loved his mother dearly, despite the way she treated him.
Over the years Andre’s drug use increased and he became more bitter and hard on the streets. Then, over the course of one week, his whole world started to fall apart.
He got word that his mom had been run over by a taxi and died. He was having a rough time and started having some sort of emotional breakdown. I got a call from an organization where he was attending their daily program. They said that he was sobbing uncontrollably and could not calm down and he kept asking for me.
I went and talked to him and drove him home so he could be with his family. After the funeral, he returned to the streets. That same week he experienced another traumatic situation that seemed to be the last straw for him.
There had been a little girl on the streets that had been seducing him. Despite her numerous attempts, he kept turning her away. One night, after Andre had smoked buttons and passed out, the girl unzipped his pants and started having sex with him while he was asleep.
After a while, he woke up and groggily pushed her off in disgust. She was so embarrassed by his reaction that she screamed and told everyone that he had raped her. Everyone on the streets believed the ten year old girl’s version of the story.
The whole situation mixed with the fresh trauma of his mom’s death totally messed with Andre’s head. He started behaving psychotically.
He said that he would always see (what were actually hallucinations) the little girl and that she would tell him to do different things, most of them were bad things. He also said that when he would go to sleep, his “spirit” would walk around Cape Town and he could see everywhere it went and everything it did.
During that time he would call me at early hours of the morning in tears because he didn’t know what to do. I would try and talk to him and calm him down. He then started getting suicidal and tried on a couple of occasions to throw himself out of the train.
I got a call from some of his friends one morning and they told me how he had just walked right into the middle
of busy traffic with his eyes closed and, when he got to the middle of the street, he knelt down on his knees and held his hands in the air. He told me the voices told him to do it.
His friends got him out of the middle of the road and called me immediately. I went straight through and found them and talked with Andre. He agreed to come with me. He then told me that the only time he feels “normal” is when he either had on his one particular friend’s hat (which someone had stolen from him) or when he was touching me.
From that point on he wanted to hold my hand or be right by my side at all times. He was in a constant dream state and even when he said he was feeling “normal” he still acted extremely strange.
I took Andre to a children’s hospital and waited several hours only to get in and have them tell us that he was too old for that hospital. The social worker did however call another hospital and make an appointment for us for the next day.
We left and I had to go to the store to pick up some groceries. In the store, he acted so weird that it was hard for me to believe that it was Andre. He would pick up stuff, smell it, tap it on his head, and then put it back down or he would pick something up off the shelf and then just drop it on the ground.
When we were leaving the store, he started feeling that “everybody” was after him and he started crying and wanted to run to the car. We went to my house and until he went to sleep he refused to leave my side. He asked to sleep beside me and was terrified that I would go and sleep in the other room after he went to sleep.
A couple of times throughout the night he woke up screaming and crying and I would have to calm him down. The next morning we went to the hospital.
We sat in the waiting room from 11:00am until 4:00pm and finally got called in. When the doctor finally saw us, he took one look at the file and he refused to see Andre because the area Andre is from is not covered by that hospital.
I told him that the other social worker knew that, but because he lives on the street she sent us to this one. He was in a bad mood and was in no way planning on helping us. He even told me that “it wasn’t his problem”.
I was pretty angry. I went and talked to the receptionist and she felt really bad and called the appropriate hospital and made an appointment for us to go straight through. We sat at that hospital until about 7:30pm and then finally got called into the psychiatrist’s office.
By this point Andre had settled down a bit but was still not acting like his normal self. The psychiatrist said that the psychotic behavior seemed to be induced by the trauma and the drug use. She said that because he has a family history of psychotic behavior, the drugs Andre was abusing will continue to induce it and make it worse, eventually leading to permanent damage.
She said that the best thing that she could suggest was for him to stay off drugs. She could not check him into the psychiatric hospital because he didn’t “seem” to be acting abnormal at that moment. It was up to me to find Andre a place to stay. In the meantime he stayed with me.
One day while he was sleeping on the couch I had to run to the store. I couldn’t wake him up so I just decided to leave him there and run to the store. I knew it would only take couple of minutes. I went to the store and when I got back, Andre was curled up in a ball in front of the door. He was shaking and crying.
When I opened the door he grabbed me and yelled, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!”
He frantically told me that when he woke up the ghosts started chasing him and he couldn’t get away. He told me he didn’t know if they had killed me, or what they had done with me because he couldn’t find me. Andre then ran outside and refused to go back into the house.
I tried to reason with him but he would not calm down. He decided to go back into Cape Town and he went on his way.
Andre is definitely schizophrenic. Though he does not permanently behave psychotically, he will change personalities. Although he still goes into Cape Town every day he is staying with his aunt in his mom’s old house. Sometimes something will happen there and they will kick him out for a while, but he doesn’t spend many nights in Cape Town and will return home.
I have gotten used to his personalities and have learned how to handle each of them. When he calls me, I can immediately tell which one it is and will respond and talk to him appropriately: One is extremely aggressive and rude but I have learned how to talk to him and keep that personality calm and happy.
The other one is sweet, caring and gentle, a lot like the old Andre that I once knew.
It is hard to see him and remember the little kid he once was. He is just one example, though extreme, of what the streets can do to a kid. I have seen it happen on a smaller scale with many others.

19. Steps Forward

2008-11-11T04:46:00.000-08:00

The draw of the streets is strong and as I mentioned, I have not seen many kids truly manage to get off the streets. But there are some kids that I was directly involved with as they went through the process of coming off the streets.
The following stories are of a few kids that did manage to make it away from the streets. For some of them it was easy and for others it was more difficult. They all, however, managed to successfully make that huge step of coming off the streets.
One of the most memorable stories is of a thirteen year old boy named Thabo. I met him the first day he came into Cape Town. He is a Xhosa-speaking kid from an area called Khayelitsha, but I was amazed at how well he could speak English.
Thabo is an extremely polite and gentle-natured kid. He always has the best manners and is extremely loving. He is also very animated and loves telling stories and I loved listening to them. I never really understood why he was on the streets.
He said there really wasn’t a problem at home and I looked at him and it hurt to see all that potential going to waste on the streets.
I spoke with him several times about going home and he was hesitant for an unknown reason. I saw him get sucked into the street life and begin to use drugs more heavily. He began to stop looking after himself and his general health and physical appearance were beginning to deteriorate.
One day, he seemed sick and I told him that he should at least consider going into a shelter until he gets better. He looked at me with a serious look on his face and said, “Okay!” and I said, “Okay? Okay what? You want to go?” and he said he did.
We started walking to my car and he stopped. I thought he was reconsidering his decision. He said, “Ryan, would you be able to just take me to my home?” I was of course happy to hear that and said I would love to take him to his home.
Sarah, a friend of mine, was with me that day so she rode with us as we went on our way to Thabo’s home. He already seemed to be feeling better when we got in the car. I was a little nervous, not really knowing what to expect when we got there.
I drove and he led me right up to a little shack. I stopped the car and we got out. Thabo, Sarah and I walked up to the door of the shack. Thabo knocked on the door. I heard a voice from the inside and then the door opened. His two older sisters were standing at the door and his mom was sitting back on a chair.
When the first sister saw him, she screamed. She grabbed him and squeezed him lifting him up off the ground. His body was limp as she hugged him and swung him back and forth.
The other sister and mom came to the door and also starting screaming in excitement. They all started crying in happiness. Right when his sister put him down she picked me up and started hugging me and the next sister picked up Thabo and started with the same procedure. They put us down and his mother picked up Thabo, the next sister picked me up and the other sister grabbed my friend Sarah.
We went around like that probably about three times!!
They were so excited to have him back and they asked me all sorts of questions about where he had been and what he had been up to. They had no clue where he was. We talked for a while and I promised to come back and visit. After we received more hugs, I said goodbye to Thabo and told him to be good, and Sarah and I went on our way.
It was such a refreshing experience for me because the family was so happy to have him back and was so loving towards him. I visited Thabo every now and then after that and he got into a bit of trouble here and there but generally was good and stayed at home. Not all of the “success” stories came so easily however.
One of the more difficult ones was with a thirteen year old kid named Dré. Dré had had a pretty rough life. He had lived with his mother in an area called Philippi.
When he was younger his little brother died and not long after that his mother also died. Soon after that, before the funeral, someone in his community pointed to a man and said, “That guy over there is your dad.”
He had never known his dad because he ran off when Dré was very young. His father came up to him and told him that he just wanted to take some of his mother’s things up to Transkei (about thirteen hours from Cape Town) and would be right back down to get him. Dré waited in the house, alone for several weeks, but his father never returned.
The story of how he made it into Cape Town is a bit sketchy but he eventually got into a shelter that is located downtown. He stayed in that shelter for many years and that is where I first met him.
In late 2001 he ran away from the shelter and went to the streets. I first became close with him one day when I took him to the dentist for a tooth that had totally rotted and was causing a great amount of pain. We had to be at the dentist early the next morning, so Dré stayed at my place the night before. We talked until late that night and he told me his whole life story.
Dré is really a smart kid and I also saw a lot of potential in him, as with Thabo. He also was not like the other kids and only smoked ganja and never used any other type of drug.
I asked him why he wanted to live on the streets and he said he didn’t really want to but he didn’t know where to go. He told me he would like to come off the streets but that there was NO WAY he was going back to that other shelter. He had lived in the shelter downtown for years and then when they opened a new home out in one of the communities, they moved him out there.
He became frustrated with the way things worked out there. He was small for his age and the other bigger boys always pushed him around.
I told Dré I would begin looking for a place for him. I called every children’s home in Cape Town and they all either said that they were too full or that he was the wrong age. Some of them told me that they could take him in if he was referred by another home, but they were not allowed to just take a kid straight from the streets.
The ONLY place that was willing to take him was, of course, the ONE place he refused to go to. I told him about it and he said that he would rather just stay on the streets.
And that he did, at least for the next few weeks. The streets finally wore on him and he approached me and said he was ready to get away from them.
I went and spoke to the social worker at the shelter downtown (I had a pretty good relationship with her) and she said that Dré would in fact have to go back to their home in the community and that it would be a temporary placement until he could be referred to another shelter.
I also told her about the frustrations that he had told me about not having a family to go to for weekends and holidays, like the other boys. We agreed that I would act as his guest family and Dré would come to me every now and then for a weekend and for the bigger holidays.
While talking with the social worker I did find out that he still had a grandmother that lived in Philippi but he didn’t like to go there because she was really sick.
I approached Dré with the compromise and he agreed to it. I took him that day out to the home in the community. He got back into the swing of things and got back into school and was doing fine. He came to me about once a month for a weekend visit and we always had fun.
I would try and do fun things like going to the movies and stuff to kind of reward him for hanging in there. One Saturday we climbed completely over the mountain in Muizenberg. He still talks about that to this day.
One weekend I took him to a farm owned by some friends of mine, about four hours away from Cape Town. He loved it and rode a horse for the first time in his whole life. It was a great experience for him and he proudly hung the pictures of him on the horse up on the wall next to his bed in the home.
Time went on and the social worker at the home was not really keeping up her side of the bargain and was not looking for another place for Dré. I could see that he was getting frustrated but he really hung in there.
The Christmas holidays rolled around and the social worker decided that Dré should go visit his grandmother before he came to my house for the holiday. I agreed with her and we made a plan for me to drop him at his grandmother’s house so that I would know where it was, and then in a weeks time I would pick him back up and he would come to my house for a week.
I was shocked to find out that the social worker had not only not made contact with the grandmother in the period of months that Dré had been back there, but that she hadn’t been in contact with Dré’s grandmother in several years.

I drove Dré to his grandmother’s house and when we got closer he spotted his older brother, whom I didn’t know existed. His brother is in his twenties and seems to be a troublemaker of some sort and not a good influence for Dré.
The brother went with us to the grandmother’s house and we went inside and sat down. I thought we were waiting for the grandmother to return and then Dré’s brother said he had something to tell us. He then informed Dré that his grandmother had died a whole year ago.
Dré’s eyes filled up with tears and he started crying. I felt sorry for him and angry at the social worker for not doing proper follow-up work.
We talked with the brother for a little while longer and then I had to take Dré back to the home because I had things planned for that coming week. I informed the social worker and she was shocked. I think she could see my frustration with her.
I told her that I would pick Dré up again in a week’s time. I went home and then a week later I picked him up and he spent Christmas with me.
A few months after that, the social worker informed me that the shelter had made a new rule that the kids could only visit their actual families and Dré would no longer be allowed to come and visit me. She was not happy with the decision because she knew that my influence in Dré’s life was the only thing keeping him there, but there was nothing she could do about it.

So, it was almost a year later and they had not kept either part of their side of the deal. Nothing was really being done to find another place for Dré to stay and now he wasn’t allowed to visit me anymore.
He was EXTREMELY upset about the whole thing and I told him that I would try and work something out. He didn’t get to visit me for a while but he would call me often and I would also call him if I got a chance. But, he started misbehaving and acting up more often.
About a year and a half after he had been staying in the home, the social worker resigned. Not long after that, I got a call one day from one of the childcare workers.
He said that Dré had just totally lost control and that he knew Dré was a good kid but he didn’t know what was going on with him. He said that he knew Dré looked up to me and respected me and he asked me to talk to him.
I talked with Dré on the phone that day but it was a little difficult since I couldn’t see him, so a few days after that I went to the school he attends and waited outside for him to come out.
I talked with him that day and listened to his side of the story and tried to encourage him to get his act together.
Not too long after that, the childcare worker called me and asked if it would be possible for Dré to come to my house for a weekend. I agreed to it and he did. I saw Dré’s attitude change over the weekend.
When I first picked him up, I saw that he had a bad attitude, not really towards me but just in general, but then as the weekend went on I saw him transform to his old happy self. He was not looking forward to going back to the home on Sunday afternoon and I saw his attitude change for the worse again as we approached the building.
It is now two years later and he is still there and nothing is being done towards getting him into another pace. Dré still comes to visit me sometimes and he calls every now and then. I can only hope that he continues to hang in there.
Another story of a more difficult time trying to help a kid off the streets was with a thirteen year old kid named Thanduxolo. He had strolled in Cape Town for a few years. He is also an extremely intelligent kid.
At one point he would call me almost every night. Just to talk, or to say good night or to tell me about the day’s events. I would talk to him about coming off the street and one day he finally decided he had had enough of the street life and wanted to go home.
I drove him to the area in Philippi where his mother’s house is but we were shocked to see what we saw when we got there.
It was an unofficial settlement and they were busy tearing down the shacks and building government homes. The whole place was a mess and the exact spot where Thanduxolo’s mother’s house was, was an empty space of sand. We went to another area where his cousin lives to ask her if she knew where the mother lived.
When we got to that area, Thanduxolo was not exactly sure where exactly his cousin lived. We walked around, stopping from shack to shack asking if they knew where his cousin was. We didn’t have any luck and we decided to call it quits for the day.
Just as we were walking back to the car a lady asked, “Who are you looking for again?” Thanduxolo replied and the lady said that she did know that person and she lead us to his cousin’s house.
His cousin was happy to see him. Her place was a small shack, just big enough for a bed to fit in. We talked with her for a while and she told us that his mom had indeed moved but she didn’t know where the new house was. She also told us that Thanduxolo’s mom has a phone but she didn’t know the phone number.
She told us that she should see the mother in the week and she would get the number and then phone me. We exchanged numbers and Thanduxolo and I went on our way.
Since he had made the decision to come off the street, I didn’t want to just take him back and dump him in Cape Town, just because we had trouble finding his mom’s house. So I gave him the option to stay at my place for the week, until we found his mom.
He was very relieved and happy to stay at my place. The days went by and I didn’t hear anything from his cousin. Finally, near the end of the week, I called her and she said that she still hadn’t come in contact with his mother.
Finally, after a little more than a week, Thanduxolo and I decided to go back into Philippi and just look around some more. We went and he searched for more than an hour, but to no avail. I was in a difficult spot because he had stayed with me for a week, and because of that I had not been able to do everything I was supposed to do. He decided that he would go back to Cape Town until his cousin called me with his mother’s details.
He was back in Cape Town for a couple of weeks, and then a couple of weeks turned into a couple of months. I still did not hear anything from his cousin.
Finally, one day, out of the blue, she phoned me to say that she had heard from his mom and that she had moved to the Eastern Cape (about thirteen hours away from Cape Town). I told Thanduxolo the news and he seemed sad.
Not too long after that, his cousin called me back and said that if I went and got him and brought him to her house, she was leaving the next day for the Eastern Cape and he could come with her. I went to Cape Town, found Thanduxolo and told him the news and he decided to go.
I drove him to his cousin’s place and dropped him off. He called me later that night and told me that they were leaving the next day for the Eastern Cape and he would call me when they get there, to let me know he arrived safely.
Sure enough, a few days later, he called me to tell me that he had made it. He said he was happy to be there and was really excited to see his mom. Time went by and he told me that he was going to stay there and he even got back in school. I was, of course, excited to hear that.
At the same time I was surprised because the place where he was staying is a rural area and not near as exciting as the city life Cape Town has to offer.
He called me at least once or twice a week to keep me updated on things and the one time I asked him how to get there if I ever want to come visit him.
The directions he told me were as follows: “Ok, drive to Queenstown and ask where’s Cofimvaba. When you get to Cofimvaba ask where’s Qamata Basin. When you get to Qamata Basin, ask where’s Thanduxolo. That’s where I live.”
After he was there for about six months, I decided I wanted to go visit him. So, without telling him, some friends and I went on the LONG road trip and headed on our way to Qamata Basin.
I wondered if we were actually going to find him, with the directions that he gave us. We drove and did a few stops here and there visiting different people we knew along the way and then eventually made it to Qamata Basin.
We went straight to Qamata Basin, instead of first stopping and asking in the other places. We stopped in the first village and asked at a few different houses, “Where’s Thanduxolo” and after the third one didn’t know, we decided that he was either not as popular as he thought, or we were in the wrong place. We got directions for the next village over and we drove there.

When we pulled into the village, we saw a phone sitting in the middle of a field and I wondered if it was the phone he always called me from. I had the number with me, so I drove up beside the phone and dialed the number.
Sure enough, the pay phone started ringing!! We knew we were in the right place! We stopped at the first house and asked “Where’s Thanduxolo?” and a boy, who happened to be one of Thanduxolo’s good friends, jumped in the car with us and lead the way to him.
When Thanduxolo saw my car he looked absolutely shocked! He was really happy to see us!! He took us to meet his grandmother and told us that, ironically, his mother had gone to Cape Town for a visit.
Life in Qamata Basin is very different to Cape Town and I was amazed at how he had fit right into the culture. It is an extremely rural area and most of the houses do not have electricity and none of them have running water. There is not a single toilet in the whole village. You have to get drinking water from the river.
He showed us around a bit and we walked to the store to get food to cook for the night. A huge group of kids followed us around because they had not seen too many white people before. Thanduxolo told us that my friend and I were the first white people to ever come and stay amongst the people in that village.
I don’t know if that is true, but I am sure it is true for the time that he has been staying there.
We had a great stay and it was so interesting to see and live amongst that culture, even if it was only for a couple of days. That was the most rural pace I had been to in South Africa since I have lived here so it was a great experience for me.
Most of all, I was so pleased and surprised to find Thanduxolo doing so well and I was very proud at how he had fit into that community and culture so well. Thanduxolo told me that he didn’t really even miss Cape Town and he loved it in Qamata Basin. I was happy to hear that!
These are just a few stories of the kids that have managed to make it off of the streets. There have been others that I have seen, but as I said, they are few and far between.
I have seen many kids come off the street for long periods of time, only to return to the streets. It is hard to see, but the occasional kid that makes it off and stays off, encourages me to believe that it is possible for others too.

20. The Bridge

2008-11-11T04:24:00.000-08:00

In the beginning of 2001 I became extremely close with a group of boys that were staying under a bridge in downtown. The city eventually cleared out that area and built a Convention Center but some of my fondest memories in Cape Town took place with that group of kids under the bridge.
It was in that process of them being “cleared out” that I became close with the group. There was a group of about seven boys that were staying with a man and his girlfriend under the bridge. They lived in a shack that they had built, in a small community of several other street people that also had built shacks under the bridge. Most of the other people were drug dealers and prostitutes.
It was a rough little area. I met the boys at a nearby traffic light, where they washed car windows for money. They all had squeegees and bottles of soapy water. When a car pulled up, they would wash the window and then ask for money.
It was funny because I would always talk to them and I had built up a relationship with them and every time I pulled up to those traffic lights, they would ALL run to my car and begin washing. One would wash the windscreen, one would wash the back window while the others would do the side panels, side windows and even the hood of the car. I would pull away with a sparkling clean car.
One day they told me that there was a problem where they were staying and asked me to come and talk to Carl, the man they were staying with.
I went with them to speak with Carl and he explained to me that the police were threatening them, telling them that they had to move away. I gave Carl my number and told him to call me if he had any problems that I could help him out with.
Carl is a thirty year old gangster that has quite a reputation in Cape Town, which I didn’t know at that point. He told the boys, after I left that day, that he could tell I was scared of him. I wasn’t, and I didn’t know any reason I should be.
When the boys told me what he had said, I told them that I was not scared and that they could tell him that. A few days later I saw him and he just laughed because the message had reached him.
I didn’t know that I should have been scared of him and he was not used to people not being scared of him, so he found it funny. He respected the fact that I was not intimidated by him. From then on we had a close relationship.
Not too long after that, Carl called me because their shack had been trashed by the police. When I arrived on the scene their stuff was in ruins. Their stuff had been thrown everywhere, the shacks were totally torn down and the boys had been beaten by the cops.
I wrote up a report and took pictures and followed up the matter with the police. Some police officers came and apologized to them.
After that, I would stop by everyday on my way out of town just to hang out with them. Sometimes I would only stay for a few minutes. Other times I would stay late into the night.
One night when I was leaving, three police cars flew out of nowhere and blocked me in. They stopped and got out of the car with their guns drawn. One of the officers approached the car and asked to see my ID.
“What are you looking for under here boy?” He thought I was trying to buy drugs under the bridge. I explained to them that I worked with the street kids and was just hanging out with a group of kids that lived under the bridge.
They didn’t believe me and asked me more questions.
They asked me for identification from my organization and I didn’t have any on me but I quickly remembered that I had a business card from another organization that works with the kids so I showed it to them. They seemed satisfied enough and they eventually let me go. Carl and the boys found it extremely funny.
I would often take a soccer ball under the bridge and we would all play. Sometimes we would all load into my car and go to the beach. Carl and I would often go into the community that he is from and visit his grandmother and mother.
One day he got word that his brother had been stabbed and he wanted me to go with him to the hospital to visit him. Carl, his Uncle, Aunt, and I went to the hospital.
When we got there, they told us that he had just died and that his family needed to identify the body. Carl wanted me to come with him because I had met his brother before, and I think he just needed the support.
They took us to the body and we identified it as his brother. He had lost most of his color and he didn’t look very good. Carl’s aunt started crying really hard. I could tell that Carl was trying to hold back tears.
I felt a little awkward because I was not part of the family and I was not really sure what to do. I was glad that I could be there to support Carl though.
Later that day we ran around making funeral arrangements. I helped them raise money to cover the funeral. In the communities, because most of the time the people are not financially able to pay for funeral, funeral homes attach a form along with the general price information that has spaces for people to donate money and write their names.
The family only gets a few copies that have to be made official by the funeral director, because people try and illegally raise money with them.
The family gave me one and I carried it around with me everywhere I went for the next few days. I showed it to everyone I came into contact with and asked them for money. Carl was extremely appreciative of my support and help during that time and it made our relationship even stronger.
Not too long after that, trying to show his appreciation to me, he gave me a nice silver watch. I figured that it had been stolen and I normally don’t accept stolen gifts (though I have been offered all types of them from the kids) but I could not turn down his gesture of appreciation.
It wasn’t working when he gave it to me but Carl was sure that all it needed was a new battery. He took me immediately to a man at a little stand on the side of the road who fixes watches. He gave it to the man and told him to fix anything that needed to be fixed on it and the man told us to come pick it back up in an hour.
In the meantime, Carl bought us lunch and we sat and ate. After an hour we went back, and Carl paid the man and collected the watch. He then proudly put it on my arm for me. That watch really means a lot to me!
The group of boys that stayed with Carl was a fun and energetic group. They were always happy and full of smiles. We always had fun playing around and goofing off. I did however also experience some dramatic and traumatic times with those kids.
One day, Sipho, one of the boys, was arrested for something he hadn’t done. The police said that he had broken into a car, but it wasn’t true. Carl even knew the guy that had actually committed the crime. It was a big scene though: Sipho just happened to walk past a car that had been broken into and the police saw him and yelled at him.
He made the mistake of running away, even though he had done nothing wrong. The police chased him, tackled him and then hit him over the head with a walkie-talkie. He didn’t try to fight back and was extremely shocked by the whole experience. They then handcuffed him and took him in. It was really traumatic for the other boys.
I pulled up a few afternoons after that and saw Carl running down the street. I stopped and he told me he had just been chasing the guy that had actually broken into the car. He had also managed to inform two police officers sitting in a police car nearby and they began to chase the criminal.
While I was standing there talking to Carl the boys came up and not long after that a police car pulled up next to us. In the back of the car was the guy that had actually committed the crime that Sipho had been accused of.
Carl identified him and they took him away. Sipho was released later that day.
When all the excitement was over, I drove the boys to the traffic light and dropped them off and then drove back to talk to another street guy that I knew who had walked up during all the action.
The other guy and I stood there and talked for a while and then, as we were talking, I could see a crowd of street people gathering under the bridge. I didn’t know what was going on but the people seemed to be getting frantic.
Then I saw one of the kids that I had just dropped off at the traffic light and I wondered why he was back over there so quickly. I decided to go see what was going on.
As I got closer, the people started yelling, “RYAN!!! We didn’t know you were still here!! Come quickly!!!!!” When I got closer to the group of people I saw Dhumi, one of the younger boys, on the ground going into convulsions.
He had been standing at the traffic lights and started having a seizure and the other boys had carried him to the bridge. I quickly ran and jumped into my car and pulled up next to Dhumi.
We loaded him into the back seat with Carl and one of the other boys. I drove to the hospital as fast as I could.
As I was driving Dhumi went totally unconscious. I drove faster than I ever had before, and I drive pretty fast on a regular basis! I turned on my hazard lights and just held my hand on the horn as I drove. I got there in record time.
When we got to the hospital, I pulled right up to the emergency room doors and I jumped out and picked up Dhumi and ran into the hospital. Normally you have to sign in and wait for hours in the waiting room but I went right past the security guard and into the back, kicking open the doors to the emergency ward.
I put Dhumi down on a bed and I grabbed a nurse and pulled her over to him.
They began to try and stabilize him and immediately injected him with some medication. His seizure eventually stopped. After a while, he woke up out of his unconscious state and was confused. The doctors decided to keep him in the hospital so they could run further tests and treatments.
He was diagnosed as an epileptic. After about a week he was released and they prescribed medicine for him that he had to take every day. It was extremely difficult to get him to understand the dangers of continuing to live on the streets with his condition.
He was not interested in going home or getting off the streets, especially because he remembered nothing from the event except for waking up in the hospital. I tried to stress how important it was for him to take his medicine every day.
I told the boys how important it was for them to look after him when they were at the traffic lights. I kept imagining him standing at the traffic light and then having a seizure and falling under a moving car.
Carl and I tried to talk him into going home and he was very stubborn and was set on staying in Cape Town but eventually, he agreed to go home and he did. Since that time, he only comes into town every now and then but stays home for the most part.
Another memorable event that occurred under the bridge was when my mom came for a visit.
Carl and the boys were excited to meet my mom and Carl had told me that when she arrived he wanted to cook dinner for her one night. I had told my mom that in advance and so she brought along some shirts for all of the boys and Carl.
One night during her visit, we went under the bridge and Carl cooked potatoes, rice and chicken over the fire. We sat around the fire and ate, talked, and had a great time.
After we were finished eating, my mom gave them the shirts that she had brought. They were thrilled. It was then when I really realized that they had become like a family to me and it was so cool that my family from back home could meet and hang out with my family in Cape Town.
The City eventually cleared out that area completely and all the people had to move away. Carl and the boys all dispersed.
I still see them every now and then, but every time I pass the Convention Center, I think about the times that I spent under that bridge and I am so thankful for those memories.

21. Treasure Box

2008-11-11T04:20:00.000-08:00

I have a box. A box filled with treasure. At least it’s treasure to me: A hand knitted cap, a little black ball, a Bob Marley key chain, some seashells, a small green-haired troll doll, matches, broken jewellery, a watch that almost works, foreign coins, a blue whistle, a stuffed dog that was hand coloured just for me, a lollypop, a rock that looks like a crystal, a couple of pens, and much more!!
That stuff probably doesn’t sound like much of a treasure to you and I am sure if I just ran upon any random box of this stuff, I would merely pass it by. But the stuff in my box is special because they are all gifts from the kids.
To me, everything in that box represents their giving hearts. Each item has a face and a story behind it. The kids might not have much, but what they do have, they are willing to share with me.
Time after time, I have been taken back by the hearts of the kids. They have been turned away and let down by so many people, taken from, and used so many times, but somehow they manage to find it in their hearts to give to me?!
One of my first experiences of this was one time I had been in town all day, and had forgotten to bring money with me and hadn’t had anything to eat or drink the whole day.
By the end of the day, I said my “goodbyes” to the kids at the station and went on in to catch my train, only to find out that it wouldn’t be leaving for another forty-five minutes.
Tired, hungry, thirsty and feeling a bit weak, I went back out to hang with the kids until it was time for my train to leave. They could all see that I was a bit tired, hungry and thirsty and I could see their minds starting to work.
They huddled into a group and discussed something and then broke, almost like a sports team before a big play.
Then one of the boys announced to me that THEY were going to buy me a drink and that I should come with him and pick out which one I wanted.
They got their money together and gave it to the one boy and he guided me towards the shop. At first, I was hesitant because I didn’t want to take anything from them, but then I thought to turn them down might insult them, and I didn’t want to do that. So, I accepted their offer.
The boy and I proudly walked back to the group with an ice cold Coke and they all stood, full of pride, and watched respectfully as I drank the Coke. I offered to share with them, but they would not stand for it and insisted that I drink it all myself.
Another “first experience” of their giving hearts was one night when I was driving through town and I saw a group of boys on the side of the road and stopped to say hi. I didn’t have much time because a friend and I had to meet some people for dinner, but I wanted to see how they were and what they were up to. They all, about nine of them, jumped into my little white VW Golf, as they often do, and I offered to give them a lift to wherever they were going.
As we were driving I heard them whispering and plotting something in the back seat. I wasn’t sure what they were up to. All of a sudden, one of them said, “Ryan, will you please drive to McDonalds?”, so I followed his request and drove to McDonalds, thinking that they wanted to get out there or something.
When I got there they pointed out a parking place for me and told me to park.
One of the boys jumped out, but the rest of the group excitedly waited in the car. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Before I knew it, the one boy was running back out of McDonalds with an ice cream cone - only one.
He proudly handed it through my window and they all said that it was “just for me” and that I wasn’t allowed to share it. I drove them to their destination, while enjoying my ice cream.
I felt overwhelmed with joy but also humbled at the same time. They were all talking about how hungry they were but then, without asking me for anything, they buy me an ice cream and once again refused to allow me to share it!
Another memorable experience was one day right in the middle of a month when I didn’t have any money. Some unexpected expenses came up in the beginning of the month and a few days into it, I was flat broke.
I would just go, day by day, not really knowing where my meals would come from, and making do with what was around. Every day I would pray that the Lord would provide something for me and I learned not to despise a single thing, even if it was just a slice of bread, or something out of the trashcan.
One day I was sitting with a group of kids under a tree. We were just sitting there talking.
All of a sudden, out of the blue, Shawn, an eighteen year old kid that I have known since the beginning started talking about how much I mean to them.
He started saying, “You have helped us for all these years and you have given so much to us and we haven’t given you anything in return!” Unaware of my financial situation, he then reached in his sock and pulled out twenty Rand.
He tried to hand it to me and he said that he wanted to give that to me for all I have done for the kids.
I was hesitant to take it and I thanked him for his gesture but I told him I couldn’t take his money. He would not accept “no” for an answer and was persistent in trying to give me the money.
Eventually, a street girl who was sitting there grabbed it out of Shawn’s hand and said, “Well, if he doesn’t want it I’ll take it!!” Then she shoved it down her shirt and put it in her bra.
Shawn, determined to give me the money, without hesitating reached down the girl’s shirt, retrieved the twenty Rand, and put it in my hand and told me that I didn’t have a choice. I decided to accept it for a couple of reasons: I felt like I was starting to offend him by not taking it and I knew that if it got back in the hands of the girl, there was no telling where she would try to put it next, and I knew that Shawn would get it out of wherever it was she decided to put it.
I had also just been wondering where I was going to get my next meal so, it was an answer to my prayer.
I looked Shawn in the eye and thanked him and then told him, “You know, I don’t have ANY money right now so this really means a lot to me! I think it was God that told you to give this to me.” He proudly smiled from ear to ear and said, “Yeah…Yeah! I felt in my heart that God was wanting me to give it to you!!”
We talked a little while longer and then I went on my way, AND I was able to eat that day. For me, it was an incredible experience of the giving hearts of the kids!
These are just a few examples of the amazing hearts of the kids and since those first few experiences, things like that have happened on a weekly basis.
There have even been times when I have been low on money and the kids will put petrol in my car or even insist that I take some money from them.
They have humbled me and amazed me time after time!
We can learn so much from their giving. Sometimes we have so much, but give so little, and they don’t have much, but give all they have. Though their gifts might not be of much “worth” to most people, they are worth more than gold to me!

22. Hard Times

2008-11-11T04:19:00.000-08:00

In September 2001 I went to the States for three weeks to visit friends and family. On my return to Cape Town I went through a series of hard times over the next few months.
I had just happened to be in the States during September 11th but it was actually pretty funny because, in my absence, there were all sorts of rumors going around Cape Town about me. Some of the kids thought that I was in one of the planes that had crashed into the twin towers.
The other funny rumor branched out of me getting a TB test while I was in the States and testing positive to being exposed to it.
I did have the test, and during the time that it took to get the chest x-ray results back, I had told one of my friends back in South Africa about it, and he told some of the kids and the rumor was out that I actually had TB.
Well, I tested negative but the talk going around Cape Town was that I had TB and wasn’t going to be able to come back. Some of the kids mixed up the two stories and thought that I had died from TB.
Anyway, I had a warm greeting when I walked back onto the streets of Cape Town. Kids ran up to me, almost as if I was a ghost and excitedly screamed, “YOU’RE ALIVE!!!!” It was very funny! I had to explain over and over again that I WAS NOT in the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center and I DID NOT have TB.
The funny thing is there are still some kids that still believe that I was in the airplanes and I just managed to survive somehow.
One day, two years after the whole thing, a kid proudly told a friend of his that I had never met before, about how I was there during all that stuff and how I was in the airplane, but I managed to escape. I guess they have pretty active imaginations!
With all of that said, I was happy to be back and it was nice to be so warmly received.
Near the end of September, I came into contact with a kid named Jonathan. Jonathan was about eighteen years old but he looked like he was about fourteen. This was mostly because he was extremely sick with a terrible case of TB that he had endured for years.
His biggest problem was that he had started and stopped the medication without finishing it so many times that he had become immune to the medication.
When I met him, he was living on the streets and was at a very bad stage of the illness. He was extremely weak, skinny and would get out of breath at the slightest exertion of energy. Because he started and stopped the medication so many times, most of the clinics and hospitals knew him well and were not too keen on taking him in.
His health got worse and worse and finally I decided to try and find some place for him to stay.
He said he had family in the Cape Town area so we decided to go and ask if he could stay with them. When we made contact with his family they told us that he didn’t care about himself and he didn’t take care of himself and it was his own fault that he was sick.
They would not let him stay there.
They even went as far as to tell me not to contact them if he died because they don’t even care.
With nowhere else to take him, I decided to let him stay at my place until we could find somewhere else for him to live. He lived with me for a little over two weeks and in that time I got to know him really well.
He was really an amazing kid that had experienced a lot in his life! He had the most peaceful and gentle disposition.
I remember the first night he was at my house. I had put a mattress out for him, in front of the TV and I went into my room to go to bed. Right as I laid down, I heard him start to cough.
The coughing soon turned into violent hacking, which then turned into terrible gagging noises. It sounded like he was dying!!
I jumped up and ran into the room and he was laying there as calm as ever, with beads of sweat all over his face. I asked him if he was okay and he said, “Yeah! I am fine!! This happens every night if I eat anything after 6:00.”
He smiled and then laughed at me for thinking that he was dying or something and then went on coughing and hacking, until he eventually threw up.
Then he was able to peacefully sleep. That was pretty much a nightly routine.
Because he was so weak, he would get out of breath at the slightest thing. We tried going for a walk around Muizenberg one day to kind of “get out” of the house a bit and he had to stop about every five steps to catch his breath. I finally just put him on my back and carried him around.
Needless to say, our walk was cut a little short that day.
He was incredibly weak and would get totally out of breath just walking up the short flight of steps to my flat. He was just like a little old man.
He had a great sense of humour though, and I teased him about how he was like a grandpa; his wisdom and life experience for his age only made him seem all the more older. That is when I started calling him “Madala”, which is the Xhosa word for “old man”.
From that day on he would tease with me in return and call me “my son” or “my boy”. It was pretty funny.
I really enjoyed Jonathan’s company and I loved listening to his stories. He told me about how he used to be a runner for one of the biggest gangs in Cape Town. Not only that, but he was one of the few people that could actually call up the infamous leader of the gang and talk to him.
The gang leader knew him by name.
He told me different stories about when he was a runner and showed me his scars where he had been shot several times. I can still hear him graphically describing how it feels to get shot and the sensation of having a warm bullet going through your body.
He also told me about the point when he decided to change his life. He said he asked Jesus into his life and that is when he decided he didn’t want to be a gangster anymore. He got out of the gangster life, and stayed out.
After almost three weeks of Jonathan staying at my house, we finally found a hospital that was willing to take him and he went to stay there.
I was glad that he was finally in a hospital where he could be properly looked after but I questioned how much longer he was going to live.

23. Hard Times: Eric

2008-11-11T04:18:00.000-08:00

The next month brought its fair share of struggles! It was around that same time that Daniel was supposed to go to court for his rape, murder, and breaking and entering case.
That was the point when I had agreed to be his legal guardian because his mom refused to go to court and he was staying in a new shelter in Claremont, a suburb of Cape Town.
When I got to the shelter on the morning of his trial the childcare worker informed me that he had run away the night before. I called the court and told them and they said it was no problem and they understood.
I didn’t see my trip to the shelter as a total waste though because I saw Eric, a kid that I hadn’t seen in about five months.
Eric was one of the first kids I met in Claremont. I had built a close relationship with him.
I loved hanging out with him because he was always smiling, full of jokes and joy. He never failed to bring a smile to my face. That morning when I saw him at the shelter, he was proud to tell me that the reason I hadn’t seen him for five months was because he was off the streets and had been living in another shelter but he had just come to live in the new shelter in Claremont that had just opened that week.
It was great to see Eric! He looked great and he seemed to be in top spirits. I never would have guessed that would be the last time that I would ever see him again.
Three days after I had seen Eric I heard a rumor that a kid had died in the shelter from a “freak accident”. I called and spoke with the lady in charge and I was shocked and appalled at her lack of knowledge of the event and about the kid that had died. I asked her what his name was and she gave me a Xhosa name that was on his papers.
Most of the street kids will change their names or go by nicknames and I didn’t recognize the name that she told me.
I asked her if it was Eric and she said she wasn’t sure. I said that if it was Eric she would probably know because he had strolled in that area for about five years and everybody knew him.
She said, “Oh, well then no, it isn’t him. This kid just came last week.”
And I said, “Well, yes. I also saw Eric last week on the day he came there, and he had been out of the area for five months. But he also came there last week.”
She then said, “Oh, it must be him then.” She said I could come in and bring a picture of him if I wanted to be sure and I agreed to do so.
I went to the shelter the next day with a picture of Eric and found out that it was, in fact, Eric. They told me the story of exactly what had happened. And it definitely was a “freak” accident!
What happened was that Eric and another boy had gotten into an argument and, as the kids normally do, Eric picked up the closest object to him, which happened to be a shoe and threw it at the other boy.
The boy, in return, picked up the closest object to him and threw it back at Eric. The object that the other boy threw at Eric happened to be a paint roller, without the actual fluffy roller part on it, so the long bare pin was exposed.
The roller had been lying around because the shelter was still being painted and renovated.
When the boy threw the roller at Eric it came at a fast pace and all he could do was turn his head. The pin of the roller went straight into the back of Eric’s neck.
The childcare worker that was on duty at the time said that Eric did not fall to the ground, but he just slowly went down to his knees and then laid on his back.
He said that Eric laid there with a smile on his face, and because Eric was always playing around and the childcare worker had not seen everything thing that had gone on, he thought Eric was just joking around.
It was only when he saw the growing puddle of blood under Eric’s head that he realized that it was serious.
The boy that had thrown the roller frantically ran over to Eric and tried to pull it out as he sobbed and screamed for Eric to wake up. The childcare worker stopped him and they called an ambulance.
He then went over to Eric and saw that he had already died but he said when he put his hands on him and looked down at his smiling face, he experienced a peaceful feeling that he had never felt before and he felt as if the whole room was filled up with whiteness.
This whole matter was frustrating to me for several reasons. Accidents happen, and I can accept that. It is not always the accident that is the problem but the way it is handled afterwards.
The lady in charge of the shelter tried to cover up the situation for fear that if word got out about the accident, the new shelter would be shut down.
She had the boy that threw the roller arrested and put all of the blame on him. I couldn’t believe it.
When I asked where he was so I could visit him, she said she didn’t know. I haven’t seen him since then.
I expressed my feeling that he had not done it on purpose and that he was probably traumatized and to have to go to jail on top of that would only make things worse.
She responded by saying, “Well, he will probably get off with manslaughter and not murder.”
I was furious!
She also told the other boys in the shelter that what had happened was over and that they were not to talk about it anymore.
All but two boys ran away from the shelter that week.
I went there the evening before Eric’s funeral and was shocked to find them all out sitting on the sidewalk. They told me that she had told them that they were not allowed to go to the funeral unless they stayed in the shelter.
These are kids that had lived on the streets with Eric for years. They were his family! I fit all 13 of them into my small car and we went for a drive.
It was night and I just drove around and I ended up driving to the beach and we got out and sat and talked on the beach.
In that time they asked me all sorts of questions that they had not been allowed to ask.
Some of them were as simple as, “Where is Eric’s body?”
I answered all of their questions as best as possible and told them that as many of them as could fit in my car could ride with me to the funeral the next day.
I was asked to speak at the funeral because in the Xhosa tradition they like to have people stand up and speak at the funeral.
There will usually be someone to report how the person died, another to talk specifically about the person and honor them, and then a preacher to give the message.
The childcare worker was asked to talk about how he died. One of his teachers was asked to talk about his participation in a program he had gone to for the past five months and I was asked to speak about him in general.
None of his family members had seen him for about eight years and his mom came up to me after the funeral with tears in her eyes and thanked me for everything I had done for Eric and for sharing about him in the funeral. It was truly a huge honor for me!
At the gravesite, all the men go and shovel the dirt on by hand, taking turns, while singing.
After the burial, while I was standing near the grave a man came up to me. He asked me if I remembered him and I said that he did look familiar but I couldn’t figure out where I knew him from.
He then said that I probably didn’t recognize him because he didn’t have on his uniform. Then he explained that he was a police officer in town. I immediately remembered and also remembered that I had had one of my infamous “run ins” with him and his partner not too long ago.
It was actually his partner that gave me such a hard time and actually had gotten physical with me.
He explained that he was Eric’s brother and that he was really touched that I could come and speak because no one from the family knew him well enough to share about his life. He said he now realized how important the work I do with the kids is.
He then apologized for his partner being rude to me. It is such a small world.