‘There is nothing worse than hunger,’ says Kolisi
“There’s nothing worse than hunger. There’s nothing worse than listening to your stomach before you go to bed and you just hear grumbling.”
There are the words of Springbok rugby captain Siya Kolisi, who is on a charity drive to support the less fortunate through the Kolisi Foundation.
The World Cup-winning captain and his wife, Rachel, recently launched their foundation and have been hard at work delivering personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals and feeding those who are seriously affected by Covid-19 in the Eastern Cape.
Speaking to CNN, Kolisi said helping the less fortunate was something close to his heart.
He said having experienced hunger first hand gave him more reasons to give back because there was “no better feeling than helping somebody else”.
He remembers only too well what is it like to go to bed hungry as a child.
“If I went a couple of days without eating, I would go to my neighbour and go ask for something.
“Sometimes we live in a house with 10 or 15 people in one room.
“It’s really hard to have social distancing.”
The charity initiative is in Zwide, Port Elizabeth, where Kolisi grew up, and he hopes to extend it to other townships, including in the Western Cape.
Last week, Kolisi and his wife dropped off 500 food parcels for people in Zwide in partnership with the Imbumba Foundation and Nelson Mandela
Foundation. The couple also encouraged the public to donate and help out in any way they could.
“With the food packages that we drop off we are adding messages in Xhosa, because this is predominately for the Xhosa areas,” Kolisi said.
“The most important is this — if you want people to stay home, tell them why.
“You can’t just tell someone to stay home and not give them anything. ”—