My day with Gift, a Zimbabwean street-kid
My tour guide is Gift, 18 years old, with fiercely red eyes that stared out from a gaunt sallow face. Gift is from Nyanga originally, he left school in Form one, and has never had a job. He “works” the streets, the systems, watches cars, cleans cars, buys and sells commodities – and he lives in a ditch.
I have watched Gift grow up from a skinny little kid into even skinnier adulthood. There is a home for street kids in Bulawayo run by a wonderfully caring church group, but after Gift’s initial stay with them, he ran away, preferring the freedom of the streets. We took a trip to his “Home” which is not far from his main haunt – a suburban shopping centre in what was once an affluent residential suburb. Not any more!
Gift’s home comprises a shallow depression behind a fallen log; dead palm fronds, artfully placed, protect his privacy from passers-by. His worldly possessions include a broken bucket, a tiny wire mesh grate, several ragged blankets and various tin cups and plates.
He bathed every day, he told me, in a bucket of cold water from a tap near a hotel where wealthy tourists and businessmen stay during their visits to Zimbabwe. You can smell alcohol on Gift, but in spite of his horrendous living conditions, he also smelled of cheap soap!
Alcohol is his lifeline, he said – alcohol and dagga (cannabis). With these substances he can cope with “being laughed at” he said me sadly. A twist of dagga is easily and readily available for just one rand. Skokiaan is his preferred drink, costing two rands for a “scud”. (Skokiaan most typically refers to a fast brewed ‘home-brew’. It sometimes contains meths.)
We spoke about the cold at nights – Bulawayo had a black frost this week destroying some farm crops and many urban gardens – but Gift says he actually prefers the cold! He explained that during winter the snakes go underground to sleep. Gift is dreadfully afraid of snakes. He burns plastic bags at night to keep his fire going – he tells me that plastic burns for quite a long time. There is never a shortage of plastic bags flying around Bulawayo in spite of the recent “Keep our City Clean” campaign. He also prefers to sleep alone: I gathered from his conversation that something sad in his youth made him a bit of a loner.
Gift is well spoken despite his lack of formal education and happily took me on a tour of some of the town’s darker side.
“There ” he said, “under the bridge, live some bad criminals”. I could see smoke trickling out: I cross that bridge every day and this was the first time I learned that anyone lived underneath it! He introduced me to his friend Colin who lives nearby in similar lodgings. Colin is disabled both mentally and physically, and just nods slowly, his tiny face moving slowly from side to side: like a captive creature he shifts his weight constantly from one foot to the other.
Axes for sale
We progressed to the Railway Station area where there were groups of men gathered together in the sparse sunlight, garnering what little warmth they could from the suns rays, to prepare for the cold night ahead. There was no one sleeping on the pavements yet (during the day they are moved off) but as night falls, dozens of Bulawayo’s homeless return to what is possibly the only home they have ever known.
Gift prefers his own quarters, he does not partake of the soup kitchen so valiantly run by that amazing man Ben Strydom. “People laugh at me” he says, “they say I am young and I should get a job”. Unemployment runs at 90% in Zimbabwe: where on earth would he get a job he asks?
I wondered about his preoccupation and fear of “being laughed at” …..?
As we tour the city I take cognisance of all the small ways in which the unemployed were eking out a living: there outside the post office is a man who mends shoes. People were sitting on the pavement waiting while he repaired their shoes. A new sole here, a new strap here, a bottle of glue, a strip of leather, a few nails and he has a business! It was ingenious people like him who bore the brunt of Mugabe’s terrible Operation Murambatsvina.
Scanias for hire
There were dozens of scanias (push carts) littering the city, many of the owners lay dozing in the warm sun because their scania rental business has dropped since the initial flurry of forex has been spent. In more profitable times, these scanias would collect your goods from the railway station, move house for you, carry your goods from the market or the shop, all for a small fee.
Corner shop
Almost every street corner has a tiny shop consisiting of a cardboard box on which neat rows of sweets, cigarettes, oranges or tomatoes are arranged.
‘Juice-up’ guy
Every corner and traffic light also features a “Juice Up” man or woman – cards to top-up one’s cell phones can be purchased from the ‘juice-up’ man. For a tiny country we have an inordinate amount of cell phone providers!
We then came across Gift’s friend Cephas who sells apples. Cephas is twelve years old, he goes to school, but his mother is ill and so his afternoons are spent touting his apples around from corner to corner. Cephas does not like to just sit and sell, he likes to actually market his goods.
Cephas
He has a bottle of water with which he washes the apples and keeps them nice and glistening and they look deliciously appealing! The bruised sides are kept facing downwards. Two rand buys you a Granny Smith apple! Cephas tells me he sometimes earns seventy rand a day clear profit !
I took Gift back “Home” as dusk fell; he needed to cook before the sun went down. He promised that if I gave him some money he would not spend it on dagga or skokiaan, but would look for some warm accommodation.
According to the weather-man, the temperature would be reaching three degrees Celsius tonight.
