An unexpected meeting

A few weeks ago I got a phone call from Monique, our guest who staid with us for 2 weeks.
She informed me that three men stood at the gate and asked for help. She also told that these men take care of street kids. They would come back the next day to talk to me.

At 10 a.m. the next day I sat at the table with 4 men of Molweni. The English was poor but we understood each other well.
One of the men had opened his house for boys who don’t have a home. He told me he drives around and when he sees boys ‘roaming around’; he addresses them and asks if they have a home.

He tries to keep these boys off the street and to offer them a home. He also teaches them the value of life and tries to keep them away from all kinds of drugs.
Most of these street children are addicted to glue, a very dangerous product. Sniffing glue is an addiction that slowly attacks the nervous system with irreversible effect.
It’s painful to see how many young people are addicted to this stuff.

I was enormously impressed by what the man told me, not the fact that there are so many street children, but the fact that an elderly man, of the community, comes up so passionately for “his” street children.
This was the first time that I saw a Zulu man do this work.
I was immediately listening with much interest and wanted to know more.

After we both talked about our missions, he invited me to come and have a look at the place where the boys live. He didn’t have to ask that twice.

At some 3 km from Crestholme where we live, the boys live in a large house next to the local school.
When I entered the house, I was surprised by the “order”: to have 23 street children in 1 house trained that the house must be kept neat and clean seems quite a task to me.

The house is old and could use a new coat of paint. Also the plaster work comes off the wall here and there, but the floor is clean and the house smells fresh.
The kitchen is old and worn out. The man told me that only 1 cooking element of the two cookers is working.
I immediately thought that I’ll have to provide for a cooker because it cannot be that they have only 1 element to cook on for 23 boys.

The house had further a big room with some 12 staple-beds put against each other, thus seeming like a two layer giant mattress.
The beds were neatly made and you could still smell the sleeping-odour but also here everything was clean.

There was another smaller room with a double bed, in which they sometimes sleep with 4.
The bathroom was a “no go”, but still I walked in. Apparently the decency was nevertheless present because there was a boy cleaning the bathroom with haste; they had not foreseen this unexpected visit.

A last door was opened and we walked into a fitness room with all old, cast off fitness apparatus.
“When the boys come off the street, I forbid them to further use drugs and then they get stressed”, the man told me. “Here they can get rid of their stress; they go in for sports and loose their stress.”
That was certainly good thinking of the man.

After the visit to the house, he wanted to show me his workshop.
Workshop? I was curious.
We went back in the car and drove some 2 km back to a place where wrecks of cars stood.
Here the man thought the boys to repair cars.
Marvellous ! From the scrap lying there, they made new cars.
I was enormously impressed.

This man deserves to get support. At that moment I didn’t know yet how but I felt very strongly that we would work together in the future.

…. To be continued …

Gunter