Keri-Ann Stanton
He is the Pied Piper of the Maboneng Precinct. When Zean Ferreira appears, there is soon an assortment of kids pouring into Fox Street eager to show off the skateboarding skills he teaches them.
Geek by day, skateboarder by night, Ferreira lives at Main Street Life in the precinct and has taken the local kids under his wing.
“During the week I have about 10 kids that use the street; on a Saturday that number swells to about 70 so we have split the groups into skateboarders, reading classes and chalkboard art on the street,” says Ferreira.
The fact that he is completely fluent in Zulu helps him coax these kids out of their shells.
“I have never seen a parent or met a parent and I have kids as young as two and three out playing on the streets with us.”
Ferreira doesn’t lock the skateboards away. He is adamant about running an honesty system that teaches the kids responsibility.
“Every now and then a skateboard goes missing and I tell the kids to go find it. It soon turns up again.”
Of course there is also the inevitable hardship of inner city living, the thuggery of wild streets. Just a couple of weeks back, a bunch of his kids were attacked outside the precinct area, beaten up and their skateboards stolen.
“S*** happens,” says Ferreira, shrugging his shoulders. “It hasn’t stopped the kids. We are a bit low on boards right now but what can we do?”
And it is a bittersweet sight watching these kids on a dusky night, eager to show off to Ferreira, eager to show their newly learned tricks to us and eager to just get a chance on a board.
Ferreira talks of the cold and often freezing inner city precinct, an area just down the road from Jeppe Station, where shebeens and endless spaza shops sell the basic essentials necessary for human existence.
“Sometimes it feels barely human here,” says Ferreira, “But as the afternoon sun starts to fight its way through the buildings around 4pm, that’s when the kids descend on Fox Street. They haggle with the security guards, then boards in hand, flip flops and broken Converse takkies on foot, they hit the road, the old revolution half-pipes and the icy wind.”
As the kids improve, Ferreira is desperate for second-hand protective gear and more boards to be donated.
“The kids are sporting a few roasties the braver they get and I am worried.” And then he is off again, urging the kids to jump, twist, turn and laugh. A sound you don’t often hear here.
The kids are a motley crew. “They are not street kids; they all have family from the Jeppestown area. They go to school and they range from five years old to mid-teens,” says Ferreira, “But some of them live with some serious poverty. I have seen some kids arrive here every Saturday for the last three months wearing the same outfits.
“On weekends I get more girls. I think because we are in such a Zulu stronghold, the patriarchal society is very evident – fine for boys to be out but not the girls.”
Ferreira says it all started with a challenge: “I climbed out of my car and there were these kids playing with tyres, rolling them up and down the hill to see who was faster. So like a typical male I looked at this and said: ‘I’ll take you any time’. The kids looked at me a bit funny but I came back with my board and showed them who was boss.”
At the time Ferreira was riding a homemade plank because his board was scrapped. The plank was 1.2m long and thus left space on the front for one of the kids to climb on.
“He climbed on and we bombed the hill together. That’s exactly how it started. Suddenly every kid on the block wanted to go for a spin and my silly plank was a hit.
“My mates came around and saw what was happening, and they decided these kids needed their boards more than they do. My chinas just left their boards behind and so we had three boards to ride. You must understand that these mates are not pros that get their shit for nothing; these are boards that they have paid for themselves. I had a lump in my throat. (Print that and I’ll kill you.)
“Andrew, my genius mate, decided that we should put something on Facebook. Since then the support Nollie Faith has received from complete strangers has been incredible.”
And why skateboarding of all things?
“Dude, these kids were rolling tyres around, that’s the same toys you give chimps. These kids went from being the kids who were avoided like the plague by everyone who lives in the building to the coolest kids on the block.
“Suddenly they had status, suddenly they had some attitude, and suddenly they actually mattered.
“Remember these kids don’t have green parks and trees to climb in, all they have is the street. Luckily for them, that’s all they need to skate.”
Ferreira believes skateboarding builds life skills. “In skateboarding there is no trick that ‘you just know’, every trick takes time. Every trick needs to be tried over and over and over until you can ride away. If these kids can apply that same type of ‘Never say die’ attitude to every task or challenge that they will face in their lives, nothing can stop them.”
Ferreira has no big plans, no grandiose ideas of where his “project” is going to take him.
“Dude, we are a just a bunch of mates who started to teach some neighbourhood kids to skate… if our small actions make a positive impact on these kids’ lives, then it’s already a success. We’ve got some plans up our sleeves for some other tough neighbourhoods but it’s gonna take some time.
“As long as there are smiles all round. A way to break the monotony of the day, a chance to escape the four walls of their homes, a taste of freedom, madness and courage, brotherhood, beginnings, independence. That’s all I want for these kids. “
l For information or to get involved see Nollie Faith on Facebook.