South Africa - Longer Stories of People (Part 2)

Bradley

These are a series of journal entries that I wrote about my encounters with Bradley.
Jul 02, 2019

Around 9:30 am, I walked out of the house to go to work. The morning was relatively cold (~50 deg Faranheits). Instead of the elevator, I opted to take the stairs down to the doorstep. In front of it, I saw a man and a woman coddling against each other in a blanket. As they were blocking my way of exit, I had to wake them up and move them so that I wouldn't be late to work.

My first instinct when I awoke them was fear. I was scared that the two would try to mug me. I soon found out that this attitude was misguided. The two just went back to sleep. I felt bad for waking them up so gave them a KIND bar.

It was then I realized the truth about the streets and that I was wrong. I wrote the following in my diary

It seems to be the case that the people on the streets are mostly good people and have good hearts. They follow you because they are genuinely broken and have no choice but to beg. And once they lose hope, that's when they start committing crimes.

Jul 03, 2019
Like the previous day, I saw the couple again outside my doorstop. I woke them up and saw them shiver in their blankets. Seeing them shiver in the cold, feelings of sorrow overwhelmed me. I apologized for moving them from the doorstop and walked away feeling morally conflicted.
Suddenly, then the man stood up and asked me a question.

Do you have any coffee?

It was then we got to see each other face-to-face. The man's left eye was blinded. His clothes were ragged from sleeping in the streets.
I asked the man about his situation—why he had ended up in the streets. The woman he was sleeping together with was his wife. His house had burned down from a fire, so he had nowhere to go. He was from Gugulethu, a township, and where he lived was too dangerous for his family to stay without a house.

My heart was overwhelmed with sorrow, and I acted on impulse. I ended up giving the man and his wife all my loaf of bread with 500 Rands (~$40), along with left over pastries and an entire bowl of cashews & nuts.

His response to my act of kindness was rather unexpected. When I delivered him the food, he followed me and asked me again:

Do you have any coffee?

After hearing this question, I was incensed. The man had not even thanked me, and his greed was endless. I regretted giving anything to him. I thought I shouldn't be so naive—my kindness was betrayed and taken for granted.

In retrospect, the man was probably just cold after sleeping out on the streets for the entire night. But the money should be enough to support him for the month and hopefully find government housing & a job. At least, it should last him 6 weeks for food.

Jul 04, 2019
I was worried yesterday and today morning that the man and his wife would still be at my doorstep and ask for more. Perhaps when I refused to give, the man would attack me. But the two were there this morning.

On the way to work, I saw two people sleeping on sidewalk covered by a black blanket. My hope is that it wasn't the two.

Jul 11, 2019
They're gone. I don't see them anymore. God bless their soul. I hope they're doing well.

Jul 26, 2019
I saw hints of him again.

It was a Saturday, so I went to Nandos for their R50(~$3.5) Chicken Bowl. While I was waiting for my food, I saw the wife outside of Nandos. She begged while people walked past her and was only successful in obtaining an apple.

I carried my food home, and she followed me the entire time. She repeatedly inquired

Something to eat please

and she would make a gesture for some food.

Each time, I refused her request. Once I had arrived home, I felt guilty about repeatedly turning down, so I went back outside. I looked for her but she wasn't anywhere to be found.

Later that night, I walked out of my house to get to a friends house. I saw the husband and the wife, and the man, named Bradley introduced himself. He told me his wife, his daughter, and he himself found a shelter in a center.

Behind him, his wife washed her face using water from a puddle on a sidewalk. I wished to continue our conversation, but I had to catch an Uber, so our conversation was cut short.

August 8
I was walking through town around noon for lunch. By a parking lot, I saw Bradley, who was wearing a yellow vest. He had found a job by "watching" others' cars (it's common in South Africa for a person to watch cars as a service).

We had a brief conversation. I don't recall much from it except him saying

Things are still quite tough, but hopefully it'll get better.

August 15
Winter in Cape Town came to a slow end. The sun radiated the sidewalks ever strongly, as I made a journey to ShopRite from the house.

As I was about to enter the plaza, I suddenly saw Bradley. I greeted the father, having not seen him in weeks. It was lunch time, and he was hungry—he asked for some food.

We walked into ShopRite where we enjoyed some fetcooke and chicken together. As we strolled through the isles with a cart, he threw in some powdered milk. I put them back on the isle. Bradley put his fetcooke on the isle and begged for me to buy the milk instead. He was okay with going hungry but not his daughter. In the end, we settled for the fetcooke and a smaller container of milk.
We sat together down at a McDonald's nearby. He shared his full journey:

Bradley doesn't remember a lot of his life. He lived in Gugulethu with his family until his mother passed away and his house burned down. The dangers of the slum made him resort to living in the streets. After a while, he settled down in the streets of the City Bowl.

He met his wife on the streets. When their daughter was born, they determined that they wouldn't raise her in the same situation as them. So they left her to a relative. All his money from "watching cars" goes to paying the relative and providing milk for the baby. Powdered milk, Bradley told me, is extraordinary expensive for someone like him.

I asked him if he planned to continue living in the streets. There was a shelter nearby, but it charged R100 (~$7) each night. Clearly, this was an option not within his reach. Although the streets were undesirable, he told me there were companions that made his struggles less lonely. Sure, his future for himself, his wife, and his daughter was unclear and bleak, he would have to last through the winter somehow, but he lived day by day hoping for a new tomorrow.

The subject of the conversation then shifted to me. He asked me where I was from. New York, I replied. New York was Bradley's dream city. He had heard and dreamed about it after watching a movie set in Central Park when he was little. Expressions of awe and envy swept through his face.
As we were talking, someone tapped on the window outside us. It was a little teenager who couldn't have been more than 17 years of age. He was smiling. He's thanking you, Bradley told me, he's a friend from the streets. A girl joined the little teenager, and then several others.

After Bradley and I finished our conversation, we parted ways and I journeyed home. It would be our last encounter in South Africa.

Although I never saw Bradley again, his presence would be everywhere. Unlike the first time I had walked the streets, they welcomed me. The people on the streets no longer glared or yelled at me. Instead, many would smile at me when our eyes met. It happened so many times that it couldn't have been an accident—this I know to be true. Bradley and his friends must have spread the word about me. An Asian man with glasses venturing Cape Town from New York.

Steady

Jul 05, 2019
My thyroiditis was killing me. My voice was disappearing and the lump in my neck wasn't. Compounded with overwork, I was utterly exhausted. That meant cooking dinner wasn't an option.
For dinner, a group of friends wanted to meet in Jerry's Burger Place at Sea Point. I ordered an Uber and met a Zimbabwean driver named Steady.

We had a pleasant conversation, and he offered to show me his township and his family the day after. He told me "there it's a different lifestyle." We exchanged WhatsApp and I left the Uber to go to the dinner.

Throughout the dinner, I was left wondering if I should take Steady's deal. Here was a man I had never met before. While appearing to be friendly, he could have easily been tricking me into a dangerous situation. It wasn't unimaginable for him to try to take me into a remote location and rob me.

At the same time, if I did not take his deal, I would not be able to see this "different lifestyle." The reality on the ground would be shrouded in my ignorance. This idea that my understanding of this place would ignore the common realities of the majority bothered me. It appeared, I was curious more so than afraid.

I sent a WhatsApp to my new contact

What time do you want to meet tomorrow?

Jul 06, 2019
We met early in the morning around 9AM.

Steady drove us to a house in Salt River. There, we met his brother Honest. Honest was kind enough to host us, albeit the fact that his house had 3 congested rooms—the living room, the bedroom, and the bathroom. In his 30s, Honest drives a truck for a living and had the ambition of immigrating to the United States. He has two 3-year old daughters, and his wife wears purple glasses with a crack in her right lens.

He was the first in his family to escape Zimbabwe before the recession hit hard.

Afterwards, we visited Steady's house in a township called Joe Slovo.

His living place was simple. He lived in a single room with a quarter the size of mine. No sink, oven, kitchen, or fridge—only a bathroom down the hallway. On top of the microwave were a stack of dirty dishes.

It feels like living in prison

Steady told me, and I didn't blame him.

In his mid-40s, Steady is the father of 3. However, he left his entire immediate family behind to make money in Cape Town. He sees his family exactly twice every year, once during the winter and once during the summer. His brothers, such as Honest, made the successful journey into South Africa nonetheless.

Next, we visited a place called Dunoon. Traditionally a black township, it's much more dangerous than Joe Slovo.


I genuinely felt afraid walking around the streets of Dunoon. The only thing that was perhaps protecting me was my hood, which disguised me as a "colored" person. Even while I was inside Steady's brother's house for less than an hour, we heard a couple shootings.

For lunch, we shared a nice portion of Zimbabwean "Pap."


Steady and his brothers.

After an hour or so of conversation, Steady showed me one last place. Adjacent to Joe Slovo was the Canal Walk Shopping Mall. Even by Western measures, the mall was modern and gorgeous, standing so brazenly just a few miles from these "shacks."

It was there I came to better grasp the meaning behind Cape Town being "the most unequal city in the world." To Steady and his brothers, they are forced to navigate between two vastly different worlds, so separate that they may as well be different countries. Yet these two worlds coexist as their reality and daily.


Despite being the person more educated and better read, to this reality, I had only known one side—I was the uneducated.