On Saturday I ventured into eMalahleni’s Central Business District (CBD).
We, as journalists, spend quite a bit of time there due to the nature of our work; chasing the best crime-scene photos that we can get.
I’d venture as far as to say that half of the reported crime in eMalahleni seems to come from the CBD, and thus – to me at least – it has become an emblem of the social ills in our world.
The frosted grass caved beneath my authoritarian-boot as I shuffled through Leo’s Park, next to the Long Distance Taxi Rank, and came to a halt in front of an empty, derelict fountain.
The fountain was made out of red brick, and I imagined it had been built fifty years ago.
Once, half a century ago, someone must have thought it would look beautiful here.
But here it stood. Empty.
Cracked.
A whisper of what was.
For a moment I wondered if this park, at its inception, was one of those ‘white only,’ parks.
For a moment I wanted to puke.
Disgusted that I was disgusted by the state of the fountain, disgusted that I wasn’t even more disgusted by where I had imagined it had come from.
Perhaps all of this disgust would have remained bottled up.
Perhaps the fountain would have reminded me of nothing, and no one – had someone not neatly made their bed, folded it up and left it in the corner of the desolate fountain.
I stepped closer, acutely aware of the eyes on me.
Eyes wondering what a blue-haired Caucasian girl was doing here – here where we sent all of our social rejects to be forgotten, discarded.
A bed of thin sponge, and a singular blanket ensconced within.
I looked around, three men were sitting on a wall watching me.
I wondered if one of them slept in this ‘bed’ last night.
I have vivid memories of out outdoor musical festivals in the fall; at night, when the temperatures plummeted to near-zero, even inside of a tent – even in a sleeping bag – even under a blanket, you felt like you’d freeze and never wake up again.
I wondered what it must be like having less than that, in lower temperatures, lying in an empty bowl of concrete.
And the truth is; someone sleeps here because we don’t care, or because we don’t care enough.
As long as we are comfortable behind our burglar bars, and in our SUV-crossovers, and with our overdrawn clothing accounts – nothing will change.
Because it doesn’t have to.
We aren’t motivated to change a thing.
Anxiously yours,
Aimee
(P.S. I never post-script, but should you feel moved to donate blankets to eMalahleni’s homeless – kindly contact Pastor Given on 072 814 1802 or Maureen on 082 565 6770 who are collecting blankets till July 18).
