The Haven

I turned down Napier Street at the Cape Quarter, the epitome of wealth and luxury, and within 100 metres the smell of human shit invaded the car and my nostrils. “We’re not in Kansas anymore”, I thought to myself as I got out the car and triple checked that all the doors were locked. I rang the buzzer to the Haven Night Shelter, and while waiting the ten minutes it took for them to open the security gate and with more and more scary fellows descending on me, the thought crossed my mind that my uncomfortable experience might, instead of volunteering at the shelter, be something involving me being robbed, stabbed and possibly raped.

Nevertheless, the gate was finally opened and I was greeted by Bob, the weekend superintendent at the Haven. Bob is a 60 year old architect who, for the last 10 years, has spent every weekend at the Haven. This entails arriving on a Friday afternoon after work and only vacating the premises the following Monday morning. This in effect means he has not had a single day off for himself in the last 10 years. He even spent Christmas day last year at the Haven. Its people like Bob who are the true South African heroes. He deserves a medal just for putting up with the poo smell for 10 years.

After a short tour of the building, I was put to work in the kitchen with Chrissie and Kauthar, two resident ladies in charge of meals at the Haven. They both ended up at the shelter after losing their jobs at supermarkets and as a result could no longer pay rent. Chrissie has been waiting for a government house since 1997, is essentially homeless and by some miracle manages to support her 2 children on R30 a week, yet she has never lost hope. She informed me that she was meeting her lawyer the following week and that hopefully her house would finally be provided. I almost teared up at her strength of spirit. And by almost I mean i definitely did.

My job in the kitchen involved serving up 92 plates of food (mince stew) and handing out 2 rolls to each resident. According to Bob, the shelter goes through a minimum of 500 rolls a weekend. It was easy to see how. In theory each person is allowed 2, but I saw Ouma, the resident drunk (ok, one of many resident drunks) hoover up at least 9 in the space of 5 minutes.

I was told that after dinner I would have to take the leftovers and chuck them into a drum that was to be picked up the following morning by a local pig farmer. I wasn’t exactly wringing my hands in excitement at the task awaiting me, as I have a notoriously weak stomach when it comes to smells of the af nature (I have been known to shoot a cat at a friend’s particularly nasty fart, or even the fish smell that sometimes invades the CBD). With the smell of human faeces already assaulting my senses, I thought the pig bucket may just be the stinky straw to break this camel’s back. I consoled myself with the fact that this was a homeless shelter and as such there wouldn’t be mountains of leftovers to deal with but, alas, no such luck. Some plates of food came back barely touched. Maybe it was the 9 rolls as a starter that had something to do with it. Either way, I spent far more time out at the bins than I would have liked, retching every few seconds, terrified that the Kiri cheese from lunch would be joining the stew in the pig bucket.

I managed to keep my lunch and my dignity, and headed off to speak to some of the locals. The first fellow I met was Benjamin, an overweight white male of about 30 who made these amazing aeroplanes out of hardboard. He spoke eloquently and was very knowledgeable about planes in general. Fanatical may be the correct word to use. He didn’t seem like the average hobo, and I asked Bob what Ben’s deal was. He said he was a schizophrenic and the state institutions were overcrowded and frankly more dangerous than the shelter. He said Ben would most likely be there for the rest of his life.

The second character I met looked like he might have been the inspiration for the movie The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx. His name was Samuel and he was a musical prodigy in his youth, until drugs addled his brain. I really wanted to speak to him, to hear his story, as I thought it would be one hell of a story. Unfortunately, Samuel’s vocabulary consisted of two words- “Hi” and “Bye”. I suppose that in itself is the story, that this musical genius has been reduced to living in a night shelter, only knowing two words, all thanks to the dwelms that have destroyed his mind and as such, his life.

With thoughts of Samuel fresh in my mind, a middle aged man came up and enquired about my Botswana number plate. His name was Johan, and his family was best friends with the Brinks, the richest family in Botswana. He said he had been an oil broker in Dubai before coming to the Haven. He seemed like another crazy, and I asked Bob about him. Bob assured me he was from an extraordinarily wealthy family and he had in fact been an oil broker, but nobody knew what had happened to cause him to end up homeless, and he would not open up about it. According to Bob, his story was in no way unique. The Haven had been home to doctors, lawyers and teachers. A former High Court judge had even ended up here a few years ago.

I had a final cup of tea with Bob, said goodbye to the residents and the stench and left just before their lights out at 22:00. The whole experience was a sobering one, and while I would never say I enjoyed it, there were moments that made my heart swell with admiration, and it gave me a new appreciation for the homeless of this country. They are not just drunken bergies, they are people with incredibly sad stories. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. They have unbreakable spirits. They somehow manage to see the silver lining in the thunderstorm that is their lives. I will definitely go back there in the near future, but next time I’ll remember to bring a clothes peg for my cute little button nose.