This morning I was interviewed on ITV Networks, DStv Channel 347, about the Street People series by Julie Ali on a programme called Let’s Talk. They asked if I would bring a street person with me, so I took the Juggler. If anyone had predicted this a few months back, I would have suggested they seriously need to see someone. Later I hear that this programme is beamed to 68 countries! Who would have thought
Chris, 51, and his dog, Stompie, have been begging for food or work on the corner of Bella Vista and Rifle Range roads, Joburg for the last seven years. “I don’t ask for money,” says the well-weathered Chris, “but I need food, mainly for Stompie. I’m not so worried about me, but I would love a job.”
He pauses a moment and then says: “The people who drive past this corner are very good to us. They bring me dog food and sometimes clothes and, even though I don’t ask for it, they often give some cash. The problem is,” and he switches to Afrikaans, “dit voel vir my of ek hulle oorlas word. I feel embarrassed. I feel I am becoming a nuisance.”
We are chatting in my car. Stompie lies quietly outside on a blue blanket with a teddy bear and plastic containers filled with pellets and water. Chris is like a parent. Every now and then he leans out the window to make sure Stompie is alright.
“The dog won’t wander off into the traffic or anything,” he assures me. “He never leaves my side. He knows I’m in here, so he won’t worry.”
I ask Chris where he is from.
He switches to Afrikaans. “Ek was in Johannesburg gebore, at the General Hospital, and then we moved to Turffontien.”“Where did you go to school?”
“Rotunda School and then,” he looks a bit sheepish and says, “because I was a bit naughty, I was in school in Cape Town for two years.”
“At a reformatory?”
“Yes. It was because when we were small my father wouldn’t let us have bicycles. He said he didn’t want to see us end up under a car. So one day I took someone else’s bike.”
He was caught by the owner.
“He gave me a helluva hiding and I was sent to the school for naughty kids.”
“Tell me about your family. Did you have any siblings?”
“There were 11 of us. We were seven brothers and four sisters.”
He smiles.
“Eleven? Gosh. What did your father do?”
“He was a shunter on the railways.”
“Did your parents ever find out what was causing all these kids?”He roars with laughter and says, “We never had a TV.”
Only his younger brother and one sister, whose whereabouts he doesn’t know, are still alive.
After Chris left the reformatory, he worked for a security company. He proudly tells me he got his National Security Professional qualification, which enabled him to work at the airport.
“So did you?” I ask.
“No,” he said, “because I had a record they wouldn’t take me.”
“But you don’t get a record for being in a reformatory?”
He looks really uncomfortable and for a moment doesn’t say anything.
“No, that was from when I was in chookie.”
Chris then gives me a lengthy, complicated explanation on how he once again had been “naughty”, but in many different ways. Apparently, he spent a long time in jail. My natural inclination is to pursue exactly what crimes he committed, but I am so enjoying our chat that I feel it might spoil things. In any event, he did his time. To all intents and purposes he is now just trying to earn a living for himself and his beloved Stompie (and later I find out, also for his younger brother). So I leave it and ask him to tell me about Stompie. “Where did you get your dog from?”
His eyes light up and he gives me a toothless smile.
“When I was living in that field,” he points to an area where they are building new law courts, but pauses, and then by way of explanation says, “I lived in that field for four years before I moved to the room we (him and his brother) are in now. Anyway, during that time, I walked away from where we were sleeping in a tent, to piss behind a bush and heard some whimpering. At first I didn’t know where it was coming from, and then realised it came from a shoe-box that was all taped up and lying there. I cut the tape off and found the smallest puppy you have ever seen, howling like crazy. Because it was so tiny I called it Stompie and he has been with me ever since. He is now my child.”
The whole time he is telling me this, he intermittently beams out the window at the sleeping Stompie. Occasionally, he surreptitiously wipes away a tear. He then turns and looks at me and says, “One day, this very rich looking guy in a big car pulls up. He has a little girl sitting next to him. He calls me over and says, ‘My daughter wants your dog, I’ll give you R5 000 for him.’”
“So, did you think about it?” I ask.
“Never,” he snaps at me. “When I told the guy the dog was not for sale, he says to me, ‘If I give you my car and R5 000 will you give it to my daughter?’ I just said, ‘You can keep your car and your money. Please go away and leave us alone and don’t try to buy my dog’”.
It seems just talking about it got him upset all over again.
I can’t help, but notice the dog is wearing dark glasses. “Tell me about Stompie and his shades.”
Chris laughs, suddenly cheerful again. He is a most likeable fellow. Happily chatting to me with nary a complaint or whine; constantly making sure his precious dog is okay; quietly fending for his brother who he says is too shy to beg.
Back to Stompie’s shades.
He smiles. “I found these dark glasses one day, and just for fun, I put them on Stompie. I tied a little bit of gut between the arms so they wouldn’t fall off, and he can just shake them off. It was just for a laugh,” he says happily, “but he kept them on all day. Now he wears them most of the time. It’s been about three years now.”
I ask Chris what his biggest hope is.
“We have to move out the room at the end of this month. My landlady is getting married, and her husband doesn’t want us there. So I need somewhere to stay. Even just a tent and we can live by the river. I also need bamboo.
“ If I could get some different thicknesses of bamboo, I could make bird-feeders, which that guy will take,” and he points at a nursery across the road, “I love working with my hands. Every day I wake up and thank Jesus that I can still see and my fingers work.”
The Broom Daddy: Called me out of the blue to see if I was alright, as he hadn’t seen me around. Weird.
The Bag Man: I again had the briefest of chats with him, where he couldn’t stop smiling and saying things were much better. Possibly because Michelle mentioned him a number of times during the interview I did with her on SAfm.
Johan of all Trades: The relentlessly charitable Taryn (she gave the PenMan some money and a book), donated to Johan, a brand new Samsung phone and two Dr Seuss books for his kids. He couldn’t talk when I handed it to him.
Then he said quietly, “This is life-changing. If someone offers you a job and you can’t give a contact number - which I couldn’t because my phone is broken - they get very suspicious. This will make everything different.” The bit I liked, was when he said, “My sister, who can be harder than me, cried when she read your article.”