My back window looks directly into the yard of the neighbor behind me... I keep that curtain closed because I feel that is awkward on both ends.
On the other side I share the street with a night club [apparently infamous for weekly stabbings] that I am blaming for the glass all over the sidewalk every weekend. Then there is a tall apartment building and right next door to me is a vacant house-building-thing.
The vacant building next door is a little eery... the gates usually wide open at the street and obviously run-down and not kept. Since I have been here I have never seen anyone at the property just over the wall from me... that is until last week. Last week I was walking down the street and a boy said hello to me as he was locking the front gate. I said hello back, because he didn't say "Heeelloooooo" with the I-am-trying-to-hit-on-you kind of tone, it was just a "Hello." as in a normal greeting. Cool, neighbors are moving in. But I never saw anyone move anything in, I never saw anyone cleaning the place up, I never even saw that boy again, but I did notice the gate was getting locked at night.
Fast forward to last night: I am sitting next to Klaske and as we drive away she says, "Oh, you live next door to the street kids." "Excuse me?" "That building next door to you, many homeless older kids started living there about last week." Klaske, from Holland, does street work with Youth for Christ, and mentioned she had just been there the other day looking for a boy they were taking to rehab. "Yeah, it is disgusting in there and it smells awful. There are wires coming out of the walls and the condition is very poor, but they have water."
I then asked Klaske tons of questions, trying to figure out who my new "neighbors" are. Apparently they are all older kids who live on the street. When she was there she saw about 4 girls around 16-18 years old, who apparently weren't wearing any tops and when Klaske told them they shouldn't walk around the property naked they responded, "It doesn't make a difference what we wear, the boys will do the same thing to us anyway." There are some older guys there, 18-early 20s, who take alcohol bottles, break them and use the top to smoke dagga [marijuana], and "whatever else it is they smoke." Klaske doesn't think that it is one group of kids, but rather people always coming in and out, especially when the weather is bad [which it currently is because it is "rain season" here].
I asked how most kids end up on the street. "Orphans. Or they are orphans and try to live with their other families, but it doesn't work out. Or maybe a step-father comes to their family. Or they get in a fight with their granny and leave home. For the older ones they might get fired from their job and are too ashamed to come home. There are a lot of reasons, though." There are a lot of children who live on the street in South Africa, many times due to family issues revolving around deaths. I don't see very many of them, though... sometimes I see one dancing in the middle of the street for money or food, but I guess where I live you would have to go looking for them to see where they are. (I noticed as soon as I got here that although there is such a high homelessness rate, I have never seen beggars [unlike Harvard Square, which is beggar central]. How is this possible? Maybe it is a cultural thing, or maybe in a country where everyone is poor, who exactly is going to give you money? It is not like anyone else has anything to spare.)
This morning I see two boys hanging their clothes outside the window. They see me see them.
Yep.
They are definitely living there.
They are living on the other side of the brick wall, the only wall I have that is not topped with barbed wire.
I feel bad saying this-- but this is terrifying. I don't like living by myself next door to this. At one point Klaske said, "They are nice kids.They wont hurt you, but lock up everything you have because if they figure out that you are living there they might try to steal your things." The only thing that is known is that they sleep there and do drugs there, everything else we can leave to our imagination and hope for the best.
I kinda feel torn.
On the one hand, these kids who don't feel like they can go home finally found a shelter, somewhere to sleep during the rain, a place to share with other kids they find on the street. This is an excellent find for them: shelter, community, if nothing else a place to call home that isn't the street. I don't want to take that away from them.
On the other hand, I don't really feel safe at all. I could care less if these young men are smoking weed inside that building, if they drink themselves silly, but what do the girls do in that building? And what if boredom or necessity leads them outside of that building and over into my area, into my room. I am the queen of freaking myself out with "what ifs," and this is truly no exception. Chances are they know or will figure out that I live here [by myself], and chances are that that wouldn't be a good situation to have.
I told some of the people I work with at Thandanani about the situation. Therusha anonymously called the Umgugundlovu municipality [not the police] and they said tomorrow they are coming to act as if there is a "routine check-up" of the building. They will find the kids, or at least the signs of kids living there, and hopefully act accordingly.
I feel really bad. I really do. I either compromise my personal safety or the safety of the 10+ people who might be living there. I feel selfish [although I did not know Therusha called the municipality until after she told me she had done it-- if anything, it is to protect the office so they don't break in]. But what if these are the nicest kids in the world and I [indirectly] just had them put out? :::sigh:::
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment! If you have anything you are curious about and you want me to blog about, leave those questions here,too. I would love to hear from you!