Rough life for city’s homeless

During the day he scavenges through East London’s garbage piles, eyes peeled for discarded electrical parts he can use to fix appliances.

At night he scrambles up a tree, hunkers down in a plastic-lined nest, straps himself in and goes to sleep.

This is the life of Adam Waweru, 52, a tall Kenyan who left his wife and children behind in his home country and headed to South Africa 13 years ago in search of a better future.

Instead he washed up in homeless shelters in Durban and Cape Town where he somehow managed to train as an electrician.

Waweru is one of countless homeless people who have landed up on the streets of East London. Only, when he tried to sleep on the street he was bludgeoned on the head with a stone for his shoes.

When the Saturday Dispatch spotted Waweru, he was walking slowly, head bowed, stooping every now and then to inspect small parts strewn in the refuse across the road from the belt of Patterson Street’s panel-beating workshops.

Indicating a handful of washers and spark plugs, Waweru said he had been tasked with fixing a tap in a city centre hairdressing shop.

“I can fix fridges, microwaves, TVs and washing machines in five minutes and so I go to shops and fix stuff for them,” said Waweru.

“But people don’t want to pay. If I ask for R300 they give me R100. Then I go and buy vetkoek and polony to eat and cooldrink I mix with water, but sometimes I don’t eat for three or four days because work is hard to find. I am not one to drink or follow women.”

Nor has he buckled and surrendered to a life of crime.

“I have been in South Africa for 13 years and have never been in trouble with the police or gone to jail.”

When he first moved to East London a year ago he slept on a grassy strip across the road from the Orient Pool Complex, but constructed a tree-house after he was attacked.

From the road it is impossible to spot his nest. He has tucked it up in a tangle of dense branches, and when he gets home at 6pm daily he climbs deftly up the tree and tucks himself into his lofty home.

Giving the Dispatch an impromptu demonstration, Waweru curled up in his dwelling, covered himself with a length of plastic and showed us pieces of plastic strapping he uses to secure himself in the branches for the night.

“My blanket was stolen so I don’t have one now. I wash in the sea and go to a restaurant for the toilet because I don’t like to mess here. I have to live like this because East London has no shelter. All I want is work.”

Slumped against a wall near the West Bank post office, feeding peanuts to wagtails, was Craig Lockem. Bearded, woolly-haired, long-nailed and wearing three jackets, Lockem, 47, was once a Quigney hairdresser.

Now he lives rough, sleeping in a small park near the church in the seaside suburb. “I can’t complain. It’s not like I’m going to die.”

Lockem, who said he grew up in the suburb, did his national service in Grahamstown.

“Then I heard Nelson Restom was looking for apprentices and I worked for him for a year. I ended up in Port Edward with my own salon.”

Lockem said his life changed after he broke his left arm.

“I went up on the garage roof of my dad’s house to look at the stars. The asbestos broke and I fell into the neighbour’s yard. I’ve been in the street since.”

Three years down the line, Lockem’s arm still appears to be broken. He swings it from his elbow like a pendulum.

“The bone is sticking out,” he said. “When my arm is fixed, I will be okay. I will go on pension.”

Siyabonga Tuswa, 43, is surprisingly chipper for a man who lives beneath a repurposed billboard alongside the derelict reservoir near the war memorial on Oxford Street.

In indistinct Afrikaans he explained he had worked in George before travelling to Duncan Village to reconnect with family. “Hulle jag my weg (they chased me away),” he said.

Rejected, Tuswa had no choice but to set up a shelter near the garbage and faeces-filled abandoned reservoir in January last year.

Blankets laid out neatly to dry and a neat pile of firewood alongside a carefully folded bag are evidence that this is a domestic-minded individual, despite his al fresco circumstances.

Tuswa ekes out a living by washing cars at the informal open-air car salesroom alongside the intersection of Lukin and Oxford, earning R20 a pop.

“Then I buy kos (food).”

Although they are not technically homeless, people also live in pockets of shacks and makeshift shelters in the inner city and on its fringes.

Nelson Myekeni, 62, has lived in a shack near Fort Hare University and the East London Magistrates Court since he left Berlin 20 years ago. He was one of the first to set up home in these bushes which now houses several shelters.

“Every month old people die here because it is too cold, and when it rains we get wet,” he said, showing Saturday Dispatch the small, dark interior and the damp single bed he shares with wife, Sina Campbell, 55.

In between coughs he explained how he earns meagre amounts by collecting cardboard and selling it for recycling. “Sometimes I make R20, sometimes R40 and all we can afford to eat is bread.”

Walking with a peculiar gait, Annbella Kamana, 58, was making her way back to her coastal bush shack after knocking off from her job as a domestic worker in a home near the Grand Prix racing track near Leaches Bay.

“I grew up in Peelton location near King William’s Town and injured my knee playing netball at school,” she said, lifting a corner of her skirt to expose a skinny, oddly angled leg.

“I earn R100 a day twice a week and live by myself in a wood and zinc shack. I am glad it rained because I could fill up my buckets with water.” — hollandsb@dispatch.co.za