Six-months pregnant and living on the street

Roslyn Witbooi is six-and-a-half months pregnant and sleeps on the Grand Parade. She was interviewed as part of the Cape Argus Dignity Project. Picture: David Ritchie

Roslyn Witbooi is six-and-a-half months pregnant and sleeps on the Grand Parade. She was interviewed as part of the Cape Argus Dignity Project. Picture: David Ritchie

Published Apr 18, 2016

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Roslyn Witbooi’s smile could light up a room. Her kind eyes belie the hardships she goes through sleeping on a corrugated cardboard box on the Grand Parade. Cape Argus deputy news editor Lance Witten spoke to her as part #TheDignityProject.

She is six-and-a-half months pregnant.

Alone and on the street, Roslyn Witbooi barely has any support apart from one or two people who share the streets with her.

“There’s nobody to help me. I’m all alone.”

Also read:  What is #TheDignityProject?

This daughter will be Roslyn’s third. Her other two children are 12 and two, and they have been taken in with family in Bishop Lavis and Mitchells Plain, respectively.

“It’s very hard being pregnant on the streets. You don’t have any support. I wake up sometimes and my body just aches and aches. My face pulls stiff.

“I get very worried about this baby. It’s a miracle baby.”

Roslyn says her family wants to take her daughter away from her as soon as she is born. She says they don’t believe she is capable of taking care of her own child.

“But none of them want to support me and go for check-ups with me. They don’t want anything to do with my pregnancy. But they all want this baby as soon as she is born.

“Maar hulle staan my nie by nie (But they don’t stand by me).”

She pauses to brush away her tears.

Just a week ago, Roslyn was robbed of her bag.

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“They just took it from me. I couldn’t fight them off. In my bag, I had everything. My ID card, my clothing, even my baby’s clothing.”

She had been collecting clothing and toiletries before her July due date for the past three months.

“Now, I have to start from scratch.”

Roslyn goes for check-ups at Somerset Hospital and sometimes is referred to Bishop Lavis Day Hospital.

However, doctors have told her she would need to deliver her child at Karl Bremer Hospital in Bellville.

“The nurses are very friendly. Everyone is very friendly at the hospitals and the clinics. I don’t feel like I’m being treated differently.

“But when I walk around in the streets, I feel like I am the only pregnant person in the world. Everybody just walks, going about their day.”

Roslyn says getting adequate nutrition is not always possible as “you eat what you can get”. She has spent time in hospital on drips, often due to her poor diet.

“Then last week, something happened and now I don’t know if my baby is going to survive. It’s 50/50. Either me or my baby. I don’t know which one is going to survive.”

Roslyn lifts her top to show how her belly has sagged. “It shouldn’t be this low at 29 weeks.”

She had asked a fellow street person for something to eat.

“He said he didn’t have anything more in that bin. I went to scratch there also, so he hit me and pushed me. I reached into the bin to try to find like a stick or something that I could defend myself with, but I came up with nothing and then I felt him kick me.”

She stops, choking back her tears.

“Right here,” she points to her belly. “Right here, he kicked me.

“I could feel immediately something was wrong. You know, adults, they’re tough. We sleep on the streets, our bodies are used to it. You can beat me, it’s fine. But babies are small. Their bones are still growing. I don’t know what… I don’t know if she’s okay inside me.”

Roslyn says she had expected to start bleeding as a result of the injury.

“But no blood has come out.”

She fears she may be bleeding internally.

“I went for a check up, but I don’t know. The doctors it seems don’t want to tell me what’s wrong. Maybe they’re worried I’ll do something bad. I think they want me to go with a family member so they can explain to them what it going on. Maybe I can’t handle what they want to tell me. Maybe I must have someone to help me through it. But nobody comes. I have nobody.”

All she wants, Roslyn says, is for someone to accompany her to the hospital.

She says a few days after the attack, she felt her daughter move.

“This is a miracle baby. A real miracle baby,” she says with a warm smile.

“Everybody wants this baby. Everybody wants this baby to live.

“They want to take her. They want to keep her. She’s a miracle.”

Cape Argus

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