How one man and his dog survive on charity
Only his younger brother and one sister, whose whereabouts he doesn’t know, are still alive.
After Chris left the reformatory, he worked for a security company. He proudly tells me he got his National Security Professional qualification, which enabled him to work at the airport. “So did you?” I ask. “No,” he said, “because I had a record they wouldn’t take me.”
“But you don’t get a record for being in a reformatory?”
He looks really uncomfortable and for a moment doesn’t say anything.
“No, that was from when I was in chookie.”
Chris then gives me a lengthy, complicated explanation on how he once again had been “naughty”, but in many different ways. Apparently, he spent a long time in jail. My natural inclination is to pursue exactly what crimes he committed, but I am so enjoying our chat that I feel it might spoil things. In any event, he did his time. To all intents and purposes he is now just trying to earn a living for himself and his beloved Stompie (and later I find out, also for his younger brother). So I leave it and ask him to tell me about Stompie. “Where did you get your dog from?”
His eyes light up and he gives me a toothless smile.
“When I was living in that field,” he points to an area where they are building new law courts, but pauses, and then by way of explanation says, “I lived in that field for four years before I moved to the room we (him and his brother) are in now. Anyway, during that time, I walked away from where we were sleeping in a tent, to piss behind a bush and heard some whimpering. At first I didn’t know where it was coming from, and then realised it came from a shoe-box that was all taped up and lying there. I cut the tape off and found the smallest puppy you have ever seen, howling like crazy. Because it was so tiny I called it Stompie and he has been with me ever since. He is now my child.”
The whole time he is telling me this, he intermittently beams out the window at the sleeping Stompie. Occasionally, he surreptitiously wipes away a tear. He then turns and looks at me and says, “One day, this very rich looking guy in a big car pulls up. He has a little girl sitting next to him. He calls me over and says, ‘My daughter wants your dog, I’ll give you R5 000 for him.’”
“So, did you think about it?” I ask.
“Never,” he snaps at me. “When I told the guy the dog was not for sale, he says to me, ‘If I give you my car and R5 000 will you give it to my daughter?’ I just said, ‘You can keep your car and your money. Please go away and leave us alone and don’t try to buy my dog…’”. It seems just talking about it got him upset all over again. I can’t help, but notice the dog is wearing dark glasses. “Tell me about Stompie and his shades.” Chris laughs, suddenly cheerful again. He is a most likeable fellow. Happily chatting to me with nary a complaint or whine; constantly making sure his precious dog is okay; quietly fending for his brother who he says is too shy to beg. Back to Stompie’s shades. He smiles. “I found these dark glasses one day, and just for fun, I put them on Stompie. I tied a little bit of gut between the arms so they wouldn’t fall off, and he can just shake them off. It was just for a laugh,” he says happily, “but he kept them on all day. Now he wears them most of the time. It’s been about three years now.”
I ask Chris what his biggest hope is.
“We have to move out the room at the end of this month. My landlady is getting married, and her husband doesn’t want us there. So I need somewhere to stay. Even just a tent and we can live by the river. I also need bamboo.
“If I could get some different thicknesses of bamboo, I could make bird-feeders, which that guy will take,” and he points at a nursery across the road, “I love working with my hands. Every day I wake up and thank Jesus that I can still see and my fingers work.” relentlessly charitable Taryn (she gave the PenMan some money and a book), donated to Johan, a brand new Samsung phone and two Dr Seuss books for his kids. He couldn’t talk when I handed it to him. Then he said quietly, “This is life-changing. If someone offers you a job and you can’t give a contact number – which I couldn’t because my phone is broken – they get very suspicious. This will make everything different.” The bit I liked, was when he said, “My sister, who can be harder than me, cried when she read your article.”