A hand-me-down life in paradise

WHEN I got my sense of where my life began, I found I lived in a shack made of metal sheets, wood and plastic.

I remember how my mother made food (there were never second helpings) on a primus stove when she and my dad got some money (which was so little and I never knew where it came from), and other times, which was mostly, my mother cooked food on a open fire.

My clothes were always broken and dirty and now and then I would get a pair of shoes – either too small or too big, but they were my shoes, and I never knew where they came from.

Every morning my dad would take his trolley, which he somehow got from a supermarket, and, with his thin, dirty clothes and broken shoes, leave our shack, our home to skarrel.

I would later learn what the word skarrel meant for my parents and for us the children. Every day and night for years, my family and I used the same blankets, which got thinner and more torn year after year.

I would play with children around me, also living in shacks and living just as we did, and I knew no other way. I thought this was how one is supposed to live.

At the age of 6, I saw some children put on a set of neat clothing they called school uniforms and then set out to walk for kilometres to a school to receive an education.

When I asked my mother when I was getting educated, she would tell me one day, when there was money and when they would get a cement and brick house from the government.

At the age of 7, I was taken by my dad to help him skarrel, to work to put food on the table.

We walked out of our rickety fence surrounding our informal settlement, and I was so proud, so excited, to go with my daddy to work, to skarrel, and so contribute to our survival and to curb or stop the ever-present hunger pains.

We came to big, beautiful brick houses with big, tarred roads, big fences, and everywhere were shiny cars. Fat little children my age were playing and sounding so happy in their beautiful, neat clothes and shoes.

To me this was like another world, and with all the lawns and parks and tarred roads, I thought this was heaven.

I then saw bins standing on the pavements and dad explained to me that the rich people placed their garbage and dirt in these bins and in these bins were goodies – items my dad would scratch out and place in his trolley.

The bins had all kinds of smells, mostly unpleasant, but this did not deter my daddy. This was skarrel, this was his way of putting food on the table.

I will never forget how I innocently waved and smiled at the uncles and the aunties behind the fences of these beautiful homes.

How, and to my shock, I was ignored as if I was a pest, a disease.

But a few, a very few, greeted my dad and handed him a few items of clothing and some bread for him and me.

My dad and others of our community had to hurry before the city council cleansing trucks came to collect and empty the bins.

With my dad’s guidance I helped heap up plastics, cardboard and metal pieces onto our faithful transport, the trolley.

In some bins my dad found some clothing, and now I knew where my “new” clothing came from.

At the end of the skarrel we went to the nearest scrapyard and there my dad got R53 for his skarrel goods and with that money we went to a shop and dad bought a half loaf of bread, a tin of fish, four loose cigarettes for him and mom, R7 French polony and, for me, a lollipop.

Now, years later, I own my own trolley and I do my own skarrel.

And yet I live in a beautiful country with a wonderful concept that is the constitution that states all citizens are equal – so the people and the politicians say.

And I hear people preach that in the Bible Jesus states very clearly that one must love one’s neighbour as one loves one self, and I also hear in our democratic South Africa we have freedom of movement and freedom of association. But yet I am called “those people”. Then my prayer is that you who live in brick houses, who have work, who have bank accounts and are educated will never wear my shoes or my clothing and live where I live.