One young man’s experience

“I am sitting here by the street, because I have no job. I told my mother that I will get a job, but eish, I have been here for so long and every night I go back home with no job. I think people don’t want to use me because I look too young. The older men, they get jobs.

Sometimes it rains, sometimes it is very cold. Sometimes I get hungry. Then I go and beg at that robot. But those guys there, that’s their robot. They don’t want me to stand there.

On Tuesdays I dig the rubbish bins. There are many people doing that. 20 to 30 in each place. It is difficult to get in. That old man there, he took me the first time. So, the others, they accepted me. Sometimes you get nice things. And sometimes you get food. Then we take all the stuff to the recycle and the others we sell at home. One day I made R79 from the rubbish at the recycle.

My mother is a domestic. She can’t pay for me to come here every day. So, I walk here from Diepsloot every morning. It is bad. I don’t want to go home, because everyone is hungry.

 I got a piece-job last year. I worked the garden. But the people went on holiday in December and they didn’t tell me. So, when I got there, I had wasted the transport and I had no transport back because they would pay me that day. 

That was the first time I sit hereby the side of the road. At the end of the day, I walked all the way to Diepsloot.

I was hungry and it rained hard. When I got home my mother cried. Even though the money was small, at least I was getting food while I was working there.

I walked there one day to see if they were back, but there was nobody there.”

Image credit: Melina Huett