Address: “Stair number four, Fourth Floor, Central Methodist Church, Johannesburg”

I was not really sure exactly what I would find at the Central Methodist Church in the dreaded Smal Street in Johannesburg CBD.

“Its unsafe to go there, a woman on her own ? You are crazy! At least leave your handbag behind, and drive an old clapped-out car.”

Well, I did none of the above, and I chose possibly the worst time of the day – 3 p.m. on a Friday – to drive into the Johannesburg CBD. It was not an experience I would like to repeat – the traffic I mean – but as far as the visit to the Central Methodist Church, I felt quite safe and comfortable in the midst of hundreds of my countrymen.

It was nothing like I expected. It was much much worse: the squalor, the misery, the deprivation is like nothing I have ever experienced, and I have been in some sad places in my time.

I met with the legendary Bishop Paul Verryn, a man of the cloth who has stood  for the poor and oppressed against the might of the South African Government.

Who wants an eye-sore like this in central Johannesburg right next to the once famous Carlton Hotel? Which city needs pavements clogged with thousands of Zimbabwean refugees, month after month, year after year? Paul Verryn has stood his Christian ground against all odds to care for Zimbabwean refugees for many years now.

One steps gingerly as one climbs the steps to the office on the third floor of the Centre methodist Church. One steps carefully because you are likely to stand on a desperate, probably ill, refugee, asleep on the stairs.

I shuddered sadly as I stepped over two tiny children asleep on a thin mattress, right in the middle of the draughty stairwell. What an address to give if ever asked “Where do you live”: “I live on the fourth floor, fifth stair from the top, of the stairwell at the Central Methodist Church”. Please God none of mine ever have to give an address even remotely similar.

I did have three “bodyguards” accompanying me, kindly arranged by a friend to guide me through one of Johannesburg’s unsafe areas, but I did not need them. I was among friends in this place. They knew me instantly, by my handshake, by the look in my eyes, by our shared language: it does not take long to recognise a fellow Zimbabwean.  I do not know what the intrinsic qualities are, but believe me they are there in all of us. Maybe it is that haunted look, yet disguised  with compassion and love…. There are certain gestures, inflections, innuendos that Zimbabweans have, and they recognise one another instantly.

Everyone in this place was ill: colds and flu, HIV and maybe TB? Illness went with the territory.

The Church does its best and it does it brilliantly under the circumstances. There is a simple creche for the 100 children, many of them born right there in the center.

There is a computer room where students are taught daily, in preparation for life beyond the CMC. And of course there is the Church, after all, in times of trouble, that is all that is left to call one’s own.

There is a “couples” room where mounds of those Treger’s striped polypropylene bags are piled up waist high in minute squares, just the size of a single mattress, where couples co-exist with each other. My one bodyguard Grace lived in the “couples” room, she smiled frequently and never once complained about her lot. In fact conversation was polite, carefully phrased, but always took a turn towards those three much cherished words “going back home .”

The main hall of the church was where the single men and women lived, a vast squalid hotch potch of possessions “Mphala” interspersed with thin beds.

Back with the Bishop I was forced to purloin a tissue from a tissue box on his coffee table, as my nose was already running in anticipation of a ferocious cold I knew I would catch as everyone was ill.  His coffee table was festooned with books all pertaining to the Zimbabwean “struggle”: books by Judith Todd, books by Peter  Godwin, and a book entitled “Go Home or Die Here” by David Ansara and fore-worded by Paul Verryn. This is a book about the Xenophobia which struck SA last year.

The Bishop had queues of people waiting to see him. As we spoke, people walked in offering blankets, food, assistance. There were medical students waiting for interviews for jobs, there were people waiting for finance to start a project. Downstairs Medicines Sans Frontiers were conducting a clinic and there was a long line of patient people waiting for treatment.

Maybe thats the problem with Zimbabweans: maybe we are too patient, always waiting. I edclude myself: I am of the opinion that we should MAKE things happen. But my lot, thank you God, is so much easier than that of these pain filled people, three thousand of them, who have no home other than “Stair number four, Fourth Floor, Central Methodist Church Johannesburg.

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