Beggars, car guards and vagrants can be tiresome, but many are just trying to make enough to pay for a bed in a shelter, writes Lee Rondganger.
Soswa Thomas listens intently as yet another person arrives at his shelter in Durban and asks for a bed for the night.
The woman has fallen on hard times and has nowhere to go.
The previous night she slept on the streets and claims she was almost raped.
Within minutes the 33-year-old Thomas is arranging a bed for the woman, telling her that all will be all right and she can stay as long she wants.
“This is typical of what we deal with,” he said.
“Places like this are the difference between people sleeping under a roof or on the streets.”
Thomas is the director of The Nest, a shelter near Durban’s Mahatma Gandhi precinct which scores of homeless call home.
Unlike many others who run shelters in the city centre, Thomas, who was born in Kenya, knows what it is like to be homeless.
As a new immigrant 14 years ago, he lived on Durban’s streets for weeks before he found his way to The Nest.
“Never did I imagine when I first came here that one day I would run it. God works in amazing ways,” he said.
Nestled between a block of flats and surrounded by pawn shops and liquor stores along Dr Langalibalele Dube (Winder) Street, The Nest is home to about 130 homeless people.
For a fee of R35 a day – or R850 a month – residents are given two meals a day, access to toilets, a hot shower and DStv.
They sleep in an open-plan, dimly lit room – previously a factory floor – where the beds are lined up in neat rows.
Thomas, runs a tight ship. No children are allowed to stay at The Nest, residents are not permitted to use drugs or consume alcohol.
The facility is run along a Christian ethos, which Thomas says, provides a “home away from home” for Durban’s forgotten people.
Having lived on the streets himself, Thomas understands their plight.
He left his home country in 2001 and came to South Africa in search of a better life.
“I did not know anyone at all. When I got to Joburg, I met a bus driver who felt sorry for me. He said he was travelling to Durban and asked me where I was going.
“I had no idea where Durban was but I told him I was going there. That is how I ended up here,” he said.
When he arrived in Durban he walked the streets for a week.
“I slept in corners, outside shops, at night for shelter. I eventually found a source of income by selling cardboard left behind at the market by banana and other fruit traders,” he said. He lived from day to day making about R15 a day.
He then met a businessman who owned a garage near Berea Road and offered to clean his garage.
In return the businessman let him sleep there.
Thomas said he was able to use the money he earned collecting cardboard to open a street barber business.
“During this time, I met a Norwegian man who was opening this shelter. I helped him set the place up,” he said.
Thomas said that after his shift at The Nest, he would return to the garage in Berea Road to sleep.
After seven months he left the garage and stayed at The Nest full time, cutting people’s hair during the day.
In 2004, Thomas said the Norwegian ran into financial difficulties and quit running the shelter.
“He went to Underberg for a holiday and told me to shut the place down. There were 50 people living here at the time and I just did not have the heart to tell them to go. Where was I to send them? Where was I to go?” he said.
Thomas said that he turned to businesses and newspapers and pleaded for assistance to keep the shelter open. But no help came.
“That is when I decided to approach the landlord of the building to negotiate directly with him. I told him our situation and he said that all he cared about was the rent money.
“The rent at that time was about R12 000 a month.”
With no other way out, he took all he had saved by cutting hair, and gave it to the landlord.
“It was around R16 000 and I still owed him money for the lights and water,” he said.
“From there on it was a month to month battle to keep this place open. It was never about making money. There would be some months when we did not know how we were going to make the rent. Somehow, through the help of generous people, we made it,” he said.
Last year, The Nest was given non-profit organisation status which allows them some tax breaks
.
With the cost of living increasing every year, it has been getting harder to run the shelter.
“When we first started water and electricity was not expensive but now it really is. Food was not that expensive and now it is. These are the things we need on a daily basis. We used to charge R12 a few years back and now it’s triple that because of the rising costs.
“Water and electricity cost us R20 000, our rent now is around R41 000 and we spend R5 000 a week on food. People have to shower. People have to eat. This is not about profit. If it was we would have closed ages ago,” he said.
“People may think that everyone here pays their R35 every day. It’s not the case. People aren’t able to make money every day on the street. If a person comes and says they can’t pay that day, I cannot just kick them out. You have to have a heart.”
Daily News