Today I was on my way to one of the projects I work at, walking back from lunch.
A young man, carrying a black plastic bag of clanking glass, and another plastic bag of unknown items, walked up beside me. He was dirty, beyond the usual "unkept dirty"; dirt was literally caked on his face. His long nails had thick black dirt under them, his clothes look like they had been on and not washed for months, he smelled like a mixture of body odor, horse and mildew, and he had the look of desperation.
I didn't recognize him as he walked beside me and asked me for five rand. I said I do not have five rand. He asked me for any change I may have. I told him I had none. He asked for a cigarette. I told him I don't smoke. He gave up his efforts to try and get something from me and surrendered to small talk.
"You go to the soup kitchen much anymore?"
His question made me look at him properly. He recognized me from my 16 day time on the streets, more than 26o days ago. His question was nonjudgmental, in the sense that he did not look at how I am dressed now, and how I was then, and base a conclusion of why I would or wouldn't go to a soup kitchen on those judgments.
I felt embarrassed for not having paid more attention to him in the first place.
"Nah, I haven't been there in a long time."
He quickly said he also doesn't make it there much anymore. He said he was on his way to change those glass bottles because he was starving and he hadn't eaten all day. And then it hit me. When he approached me, I thought he just saw me as a "whitey", or a guy to "get something from", but he had seen me as a "comrade", someone who had eaten meals with him at the soup kitchen, someone who had to scrape to get by, a fellow "survivor". We continued to walk and spoke until we went our separate ways.
That short, seemingly insignificant, interaction caused me to think about things.
About what a different life it is to literally have to hustle, scrape, beg, and search for basic survival. How the place we are in in life is relative and also a matter of perspective, not only of self but of others. How we as humans can adapt to pretty much any situation and become comfortable in that. Today, this was the thought that was the most revealing, devastating and wonderful for me. I am again comfortable in not having to scrape for very basic survival, and that world, which I lived in for a brief moment in time, seems again very foreign and far off to me.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Day 271: 21 August - Nothing for the Cock
I was driving today, and just thinking.
It all kind of started when I pulled up to a red light and stopped. It seems red lights have been used a lot in my life lately to provoke thought. So there is this older man who stands and begs at that red light every day. I mean, e v e r y, s i n g l e, d a y!
Though he is a little bit kooky, he does not seem to be an alcoholic or drug addict; the fear many people have of beggars. Nope, this man just seems to be your average, semi deranged, but usually friendly old man.
He strolled up to my window and held his funny looking, clear-yellow-tinted-plastic cup, looking something like a cup one would be given for a urine sample, in my face.
“Nothing for the cock?!”
“Cock” being an old British word, used as a “term of informal address to a man”.
I smiled at him and did the awkward, sideways-nod-and-wink maneuver, to say “No, I have nothing for the cock today, apart from this smile and wink”. Though I know the Cock is familiar with the response-to-beggars protocol and sign language, his request did not stop there.
“Young man, no small change to get me in the night shelter tonight?”
I said, “No, sorry sir. Not today.”
“Nothing? Ok, young man.” He then looked up to the bus driver, sitting next to me at traffic and pointed at me, “What you didn’t know is he is the piano man!”, playing an invisible piano located on top of my car as he walked to the next vehicle.
Though I am getting a bit sidetracked in the minor details of the story, it was at that moment, pulling away from the intersection, that the self proclaimed Cock got my mind a working. I mean, he is there every day. Some days he seems a little irritable, but for the most part, he is pretty friendly, and carries on conversation, even if it doesn’t always make sense. He is not one of those hostile beggars that shouts and raves and goes on if you do not want to give something.
But he is out there every day, in the same place, trying to get money just to live in the night shelter. He stands all day and tries to get money just for basic needs, basic survival. It made me wonder if the Cock enjoys being out there at that intersection every day, or if it is a task he finds no joy in. If standing out there is just a means to an end, and nothing more.
Like a miserable man, in an uncomfortable suite, sitting from nine to five in a small office cubical, hating every second that goes by.
Then my mind just went.
Some people work, and hard, their whole lives, at jobs they do not really enjoy, just for basic survival. Their lives become one big means to an end, until THE end. I started to wonder how many people in the world are so busy working hard to survive that they don’t really ever get a chance just to “live”. I think about where I come from, where the emphasis on success is based on how hard you work, how much education you get, how much “stuff” you acquire, and so on.
People spend the first 18 years of their lives getting educations they might not really enjoy, just to continue on and do 2 to 12 more years of education they may or may not enjoy, just to continue on to work a job they may not enjoy, the rest of their lives, for stuff; and some not even for “stuff”, but only for basic survival.
Some people seem to live to work. Others work to live. But I wonder how much “living” actually goes on.
On any given day…
What is the ratio of moments enjoyed to moments not enjoyed?
How often do we laugh?
Do we take time to really taste the food we eat? I mean, really TASTE it; not just swallow it.
Do we take pleasure in the sights that surround us each and every day?
Do we enjoy each others’ company?
Are we here to merely survive? Or are we here for a much greater purpose?
Some may say, “We can’t all go off and have fun everyday! Someone has to do the work around here!” And though that may be true in some way, I guess I just wish that every “someone” would find that “something” that really makes them feel alive. And that “something” would be connected to their livelihood, and therefore they are allowed to truly LIVE and not just “get by”, in a way that the means is just as fun and important as the end.
I don’t know about the Cock. I don’t know about you. I am evaluating my own life.
It all kind of started when I pulled up to a red light and stopped. It seems red lights have been used a lot in my life lately to provoke thought. So there is this older man who stands and begs at that red light every day. I mean, e v e r y, s i n g l e, d a y!
Though he is a little bit kooky, he does not seem to be an alcoholic or drug addict; the fear many people have of beggars. Nope, this man just seems to be your average, semi deranged, but usually friendly old man.
He strolled up to my window and held his funny looking, clear-yellow-tinted-plastic cup, looking something like a cup one would be given for a urine sample, in my face.
“Nothing for the cock?!”
“Cock” being an old British word, used as a “term of informal address to a man”.
I smiled at him and did the awkward, sideways-nod-and-wink maneuver, to say “No, I have nothing for the cock today, apart from this smile and wink”. Though I know the Cock is familiar with the response-to-beggars protocol and sign language, his request did not stop there.
“Young man, no small change to get me in the night shelter tonight?”
I said, “No, sorry sir. Not today.”
“Nothing? Ok, young man.” He then looked up to the bus driver, sitting next to me at traffic and pointed at me, “What you didn’t know is he is the piano man!”, playing an invisible piano located on top of my car as he walked to the next vehicle.
Though I am getting a bit sidetracked in the minor details of the story, it was at that moment, pulling away from the intersection, that the self proclaimed Cock got my mind a working. I mean, he is there every day. Some days he seems a little irritable, but for the most part, he is pretty friendly, and carries on conversation, even if it doesn’t always make sense. He is not one of those hostile beggars that shouts and raves and goes on if you do not want to give something.
But he is out there every day, in the same place, trying to get money just to live in the night shelter. He stands all day and tries to get money just for basic needs, basic survival. It made me wonder if the Cock enjoys being out there at that intersection every day, or if it is a task he finds no joy in. If standing out there is just a means to an end, and nothing more.
Like a miserable man, in an uncomfortable suite, sitting from nine to five in a small office cubical, hating every second that goes by.
Then my mind just went.
Some people work, and hard, their whole lives, at jobs they do not really enjoy, just for basic survival. Their lives become one big means to an end, until THE end. I started to wonder how many people in the world are so busy working hard to survive that they don’t really ever get a chance just to “live”. I think about where I come from, where the emphasis on success is based on how hard you work, how much education you get, how much “stuff” you acquire, and so on.
People spend the first 18 years of their lives getting educations they might not really enjoy, just to continue on and do 2 to 12 more years of education they may or may not enjoy, just to continue on to work a job they may not enjoy, the rest of their lives, for stuff; and some not even for “stuff”, but only for basic survival.
Some people seem to live to work. Others work to live. But I wonder how much “living” actually goes on.
On any given day…
What is the ratio of moments enjoyed to moments not enjoyed?
How often do we laugh?
Do we take time to really taste the food we eat? I mean, really TASTE it; not just swallow it.
Do we take pleasure in the sights that surround us each and every day?
Do we enjoy each others’ company?
Are we here to merely survive? Or are we here for a much greater purpose?
Some may say, “We can’t all go off and have fun everyday! Someone has to do the work around here!” And though that may be true in some way, I guess I just wish that every “someone” would find that “something” that really makes them feel alive. And that “something” would be connected to their livelihood, and therefore they are allowed to truly LIVE and not just “get by”, in a way that the means is just as fun and important as the end.
I don’t know about the Cock. I don’t know about you. I am evaluating my own life.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Day 268: 18 August - Fear Monster
I just thought of something today. I am most definitely sure it is not the first time this has been thought of by someone, in the every same way I thought of it. I am also sure it has been expressed many more eloquent ways than I am capable of. But it struck me all the same, and I want to share it. I realized something.
Fear is like a pet monster.
We all have different levels of fear, about different things in life. Some fear rejection, others fear acceptance. Some fear public speaking, others fear solitude. Some fear “the other”, others fear self. Some fear the exposure of things in the light, others fear the darkness.
Some of our fears are valid, and experience based, others are irrational uncertainties we have allowed to spiral out of control.
But no matter what the fear is, as long as we entertain it, we are giving it a place of residence. That fear becomes our very own pet fear monster. And like any pet, the fear monster thrives, or dies based on our maintenance of it. And this maintenance of that pet fear monster, its means of survival or extinction, comes out of how we engage with the object of our fear.
Surely denial of fear, along with avoidance of the object of the fear, only gives nourishment to the fear monster. It eats it up, grows, becomes more powerful, acts more rabidly, and becomes less and less easy to contain. Our fear monster becomes like a raging Rottweiler, foaming at the mouth, barking behind the fence, scaring those who pass by. After a while, even us as the pet owners lose control, and that fear monster literally eats us up alive!
But maybe that fear monster should not be seen as a pet at all. Maybe more of a pest; like a disgusting rat that managed to burrow its way into the walls of our house, only taking from us, spreading disease, and giving nothing positive in return. But depending on the size of the fear monster, mere once off poison will most likely not do the trick to rid our lives of this vermin. We have to work more long term.
We have to stop feeding it, and cease giving it the nutrition it needs to survive. We have to starve it.
Without doubt, this is a process of challenging it, engaging the object of fear, putting our self in a place to confront it and even be beaten by it at times, to stand back up to it again and again, over and over again, and then a bit more.
The fear monster will starve, be malnourished, a bony being with no meat, weak, feeble, delicate and tired. The fear monster will have no strength to stand and absolutely be powerless over us.
But we have to determine whether our fear monster is a pet, or an unwanted visitor. And depending on the answer to that, we need to treat it accordingly.
Friday, July 31, 2009
patience helps you give others permission to be human. it understands that everyone fails. when a mistake is made, it chooses to give them more time than they deserve to correct it. it gives you the ability to hold on during the tough times in your relationship rather than bailing out under the pressure.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Day 163: 5 May - True Activism
I think true activism is birthed from the connection of two parents...
a deep, unconditional love for someone, a group or something
and
a deep, unconditional hatred for anything that threatens the existence or well being of that person, group or thing.
a deep, unconditional love for someone, a group or something
and
a deep, unconditional hatred for anything that threatens the existence or well being of that person, group or thing.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Day 157: 29 April - Humanity is Refreshing
It has been way too long since I last wrote and I am terribly sorry for that! No excuses!
Much of my time is spent trying to convince people to act on injustices they see around them instead of merely accepting those injustices as reality. Sometimes when I am speaking with people I can tell they want to “right the wrongs” but just don’t know how; others go through the motions of nodding their heads, but I can see on their faces that they are fortunate enough to be unaffected by the injustice, and will happily continue to allow it to cause misery for others, as long as it does not begin to impose on their way of life. One of my biggest “battles” of this nature has been with the pedophiles that prey on the children living on the streets of Cape Town.
I do think the average citizen feels disgust and disdain about these happenings, but I have rarely seen that emotion turn into public action. I personally have worked with all different forms of police units and “protectors of the public” to see justice be served, but due to the complexity of the situation, formerly weak policy (now changed and still evolving), the fact that “they are only street kids” (in the words of National Intelligence years ago), and other complications, children on the streets of Cape Town are the most vulnerable and easily accessible group of sexual prey for pedophiles.
This morning however, I was refreshed by humanity. I checked my Facebook and I had a message from a person that I am not “friends” with, and have never met before, neither on Facebook or in real life. She said she had seen me on one of the Special Assignment episodes done about pedophilia amongst street children and she wrote hoping I was the “right guy”. She then told me about an event that happened Monday night on Long Street.
She was driving around the corner of a dark, back street, just off Long, when she saw an old white man calling two children to get into his car. The way the man was behaving let her know that he was a pedophile. She told me that she immediately drove towards him and blocked him in. She wrote down his number plate, the make and model of his car, and she said she would have done more but she had her friend’s child in the backseat of her own car and did not want to put him at risk. She contacted me and is going to take matters further, whatever that looks like.
I am thankful for people like this lady who are willing to act when they see injustice! I am so thankful she made contact with me, to take matters forward, but also reaffirming something in me that I already knew but sometimes forget: basic acts of humanity can be so refreshing! What a way to start the day!
Much of my time is spent trying to convince people to act on injustices they see around them instead of merely accepting those injustices as reality. Sometimes when I am speaking with people I can tell they want to “right the wrongs” but just don’t know how; others go through the motions of nodding their heads, but I can see on their faces that they are fortunate enough to be unaffected by the injustice, and will happily continue to allow it to cause misery for others, as long as it does not begin to impose on their way of life. One of my biggest “battles” of this nature has been with the pedophiles that prey on the children living on the streets of Cape Town.
I do think the average citizen feels disgust and disdain about these happenings, but I have rarely seen that emotion turn into public action. I personally have worked with all different forms of police units and “protectors of the public” to see justice be served, but due to the complexity of the situation, formerly weak policy (now changed and still evolving), the fact that “they are only street kids” (in the words of National Intelligence years ago), and other complications, children on the streets of Cape Town are the most vulnerable and easily accessible group of sexual prey for pedophiles.
This morning however, I was refreshed by humanity. I checked my Facebook and I had a message from a person that I am not “friends” with, and have never met before, neither on Facebook or in real life. She said she had seen me on one of the Special Assignment episodes done about pedophilia amongst street children and she wrote hoping I was the “right guy”. She then told me about an event that happened Monday night on Long Street.
She was driving around the corner of a dark, back street, just off Long, when she saw an old white man calling two children to get into his car. The way the man was behaving let her know that he was a pedophile. She told me that she immediately drove towards him and blocked him in. She wrote down his number plate, the make and model of his car, and she said she would have done more but she had her friend’s child in the backseat of her own car and did not want to put him at risk. She contacted me and is going to take matters further, whatever that looks like.
I am thankful for people like this lady who are willing to act when they see injustice! I am so thankful she made contact with me, to take matters forward, but also reaffirming something in me that I already knew but sometimes forget: basic acts of humanity can be so refreshing! What a way to start the day!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Day 94: 26 February - Let’s Make a Movie!!!!
I know I have been quiet for a while, and I am sorry for that! Things have just been busy! But a good kind of busy. I am trying to get the word out, in as many ways as possible, that it is child abuse to allow children to live on the streets. A while back I wrote a book called Life Under the Table about my experiences (from the first few years of living in Cape Town) in working with the kids. I have posted it as a blog, for those of you that would like to read it just click on the title. While writing that book I was struck with a harsh conclusion: many stories I would like to tell would not fully be “understood” unless the reader has walked a long road with the individual. So if I told stories of hectic crime or drug abuse that the children partake in, I fear the reader might tend to feel negative feelings about the children, without truly understanding the fullness of the situation and reality with which they live. To remedy that, I decided to write a fictional series, based on a mixture of real experiences of real children, combined with my own imagination and story telling liberties.
The idea for the series is to focus on one “character”, tell the story from his point of view (taking him from his community to the streets to wherever his path takes him), and allow the reader to build a relationship with him, so that when he begins to participate in “questionable” behavior of street life, the reader is on “his side”. I have finished the first book of the series (though I have not approached publishers yet) and am working on the second. As I was writing the first book, which I titled Out of Manenberg, I often pictured it as a movie and dreamed about seeing it one day manifest itself in “film” form. I want to make a proper, great quality, feature length film of Out of Manenberg, and though I realize this is extremely ambitious, I know that dreams have to start somewhere. So I have decided to pursue this dream with a little more aggression and I am trying to raise funds to actually MAKE the movie! I have a very talented director friend who is excited and willing to work on the project. All we need is money.
I am trying to raise 1 Million Dollars, which sounds like tons of money but for a feature length film it is merely a drop in the bucket. I started a group on face book “I hope to find 1 million people willing to give 1 dollar each, to make a movie” and I opened a Pay Pal account so that people can give. If you are interested in giving you can click on the “donate” button on the right hand side of your screen or click here. If you want to give but do not wish to use Pay Pal feel free to contact me at capetownbrown@gmail.com. It only takes 1 dollar to become an executive producer of this film! Please help spread the word, even if you can’t give 1 dollar you can help by telling all your friends! As a little incentive, here is the first chapter of the book:
OUT OF MANENBERG - Chapter 1: Learning To Survive
I can’t sleep. Its nights like these where I lay and think. All of my shattered dreams, aspirations, and hopes, of what I could have done, of what I could have been, swirl around in my head like a raging storm. I lay here on this thin mattress with nothing to drown out my loud thoughts except for deafening silence and the sound of rats scratching around the prison floor. Yeah, I have had a rough life, but I truly have no one to blame but myself for the place I am in now. I had an opportunity to make it out of my life, that was destined to go nowhere, and then because of one stupid choice, I threw it all away. I will spend the rest of my life behind these walls, encaged within these bars. How did I get here? There’s no simple answer, but the best place to start is the beginning.
I was born in 1987 in Manenberg, a suburb of Cape Town that has a reputation for violence and gangsterism. I never knew my father, but from what I hear about him, I don’t really care to ever meet him. He lives far away or is dead by now. I don’t really care. I have three brothers and two sisters, all except for two are from different men. I am the oldest. My mom was as loving as she knew how to be. She also didn’t know her father. That’s because her mom was raped by a white police officer. She grew up during a hard time and the white people made it difficult for her to succeed. She had no education and she would try and drink away her problems with alcohol. She didn’t have a job but we never seemed to struggle too much for our basic needs. Well, that is if you consider water, sometimes food and shelter basic needs. Our neighbors would always give us rice and bread when we needed it.
I have always been a natural leader. I am small, but I learned how to use my mouth at a young age. I got into my fare share of trouble because of my mouth, but I also learned how to use it as a deadly weapon, when need be. I have also been in my fair share of fights, and though I am small, I am pretty tough. I remember my first fight. I was seven, and my brother, the second oldest, Andre was four. He came home one day screaming and blood was streaming down his face. Mom had sent him to the store to buy her a cigarette and on the way Melvin, one of the known troublemakers of our area, tried to take his money. Melvin was a thirteen-year-old bully and he got away with it because his older brother was one of the big shots in one of the prominent gangs in our area, the Hard Livings. When Melvin tried to take the money from Andre, my brother knew that the beating he would get from Melvin would not be nearly as bad as the one he would get from my mom if he returned home with no cigarette and no money, so he stood up to him. Melvin hit Andre so hard that he fell and busted his head open on the ground. Then Melvin sat on Andre and took the money from him.
I listened, as Andre stood there crying and bleeding all over the floor. After I had gotten the facts straight, I decided to go settle things with Melvin. No one messes with my little brother. I felt my heart pounding in my chest as I ran to confront Melvin. By the time I got to the shop, Melvin was standing there, smoking the cigarette that was supposed to be my mom’s and he was laughing and telling the story of how he had gotten it, to a group of about five of his friends. I felt a warm sensation all over my body and it felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. Melvin was twice my size and known for his fighting abilities.
I picked up a brick that was lying on the ground and started for him. Before he knew it, I had jumped up onto him and I hit him on the forehead with the brick. As he fell to the ground, I landed on top of him. The brick fell out of my hands and bounced as it hit the ground. My arms went numb as I punched him in the face over and over again. I could feel my knuckles being shredded by his teeth but I could not stop myself. I had never felt that kind of rage before. His friends stood there in shock, not really knowing what to do. When I saw that he was unconscious, I stopped. There I sat, on top of bloody, unconscious Melvin, with a group of kids standing there in absolute shock. I slowly stood up and picked the brick back up, in case some of his friends got any bright ideas. I looked at them and I could tell that I had a wild look in my eyes that scared them; a look of a wild animal on the prowl, ready to devour his next prey. They all just stood there like statues. I announced, “You tell Melvin, when he wakes up, that if he EVER touches my brother again, I will finish what I started.” Pretty big words for a seven year old! But I had heard the older gangsters in our block of flats say things like that before.
Then I remembered my mom’s cigarette and I searched Melvin’s pocket and found a whole rand. I went into the shop and bought the cigarette for my mom and two sweets, one for me and one for Andre. I walked proudly back to my house. I felt a sense of power that I had never felt before. I felt like I ruled the neighborhood. I felt like I could take on a whole army if I had to. When I got back to my house, I gave my mom her cigarette and I gave Andre his sweet and I sat down and told him the whole story.
Fighting was a necessity in my neighborhood. Those who couldn’t fight for themselves, had to walk around with those who could both fight for them and for themselves. The gangs ruled the area and they preyed on the young boys. They recruited from a very young age. If you didn’t join a gang, you were in danger. At least if you were in a gang, you would only have the threat of the rival gang and the protection of your own along with it. If you were not in one, you would have to watch your back all the time for all of them. I hated them. I decided from a young age that I was never going to join a gang.
Andre’s dad was a gangster. He lived with us around that same time. The hatred that I had for that man is not describable with words. Every night, he would sit with his friends, in our kitchen, and smoke buttons until he could barely talk right. I hated him even more when he was in that state. He was an evil man most of the time, but when he was dik geroek , he would put the devil himself to shame. Sometimes he would even pass out right there on the floor. I preferred it when he would just kap om , which was only every now and then, because the other times, which was basically every night, he would end up beating my mom and then he would turn his attention on Andre. He hated Andre and always talked about how he was a “mistake”. He beat every bit of dignity and self-respect that was left in my mom, right out of her.
I remember her from a real young age. Even though it seems I was too young to remember things like that, I can still picture her beautiful face in my mind! I thought she was the most beautiful lady that had ever walked on the face of this earth. She was young, at the ripe age of 19, when I was born. When I was three she got with Andre’s dad and then everything went down hill from there. Their relationship was never that good but he only started really beating her like that when he found out she was pregnant with Andre. He blamed her for getting pregnant and some nights he would make her drink and drink to a dangerous point, to try and abort the baby. Some nights he would beat her and even hit and kick her on her stomach. I was young, and I would just sit there on the floor crying, but those pictures are still engraved in my mind.
When Andre was born, it got even worse. He beat my mom on a nightly basis. By the time Andre was three and I was six, my mom looked like a totally different person to the beautiful young lady that I once remembered. The beatings had added years onto her and she looked like a forty-year-old lady. She had also lost sight in her left eye from one of the more vicious beatings. Her eye was white and cloudy. Her skin was worn and looked like leather and her lips were always swollen. It broke my heart to even look at her because I loved my mom more than anyone else in the world. When I was eight years old, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I came in from playing with friends one night and I found my mom, bleeding and unconscious, on the floor. Then I heard Andre screaming in the back room and I could hear his dad beating him and telling him to shut his mouth. His words slurred together, as they often did when he was dik geroek.
I felt that same feeling that I did in that first fight with Melvin. By then I had gotten used to it because I had been in many more fights over the years. I picked up a screwdriver that was laying in the kitchen and I ran back to the back room. I stopped in the doorway and saw the bastard standing over Andre with his belt in his hands. Andre was curled up on the floor and was crying and pleading for him to stop. “Jou ma se poes kind! Jy’s net soos jou ma!” He continued to hit Andre, with the buckle part of the belt. I could not take it anymore. I felt a rush of rage and then everything turned black. I jumped on his back and stuck the screwdriver into the back of his neck and he immediately fell to the ground. He fell on top of my leg and I had to pull it out from under him to stand up. I went over to Andre and helped him sit up.
His eyes were swollen shut from the beatings and he was bleeding all over. I held him and told him that everything was going to be alright. My heart felt like it was ripped into a hundred pieces. I loved my brother more than anything or anyone else in the world, apart from my mom, and it killed me to see him like that. I started to cry and I sobbed like never before. We just sat there on the floor and I held Andre until he fell asleep in my arms. I was in shock and I just sat there, shaking, crying and I held Andre tight until I eventually fell asleep. I was awoken by a loud blood-curdling scream the next morning. My mom had woken up and came into the room and saw her man laying on the floor in a puddle of dried blood with a screw driver sticking out of the back of his neck. She picked me up and started shaking me, screaming, “What have you done?! What have you done?!” I searched deep within for words, but nothing came out.
She collapsed to the ground and held me tight in her arms and began to sob. I could see that she wasn’t crying because she was sad, but because she was actually relieved. Andre woke up and came over and we all sat there on the floor for hours. Time passed by slowly and we all just sat there and didn’t say a word. Looking back, strangely enough, that was the best time I ever spent with my mom. For the first time ever…maybe the only time…we felt like a real family. We sat there until the night and my mom finally went out to a friend’s house. A little bit later she returned with some men and they took away the body and we never heard anything about it again. The police didn’t get involved and there wasn’t even a funeral. Of course the word got out in the neighborhood, that I had killed a man, which only helped my reputation amongst the kids.
I had killed someone. I felt no remorse, no grief, but that wasn’t the thing that scared me. What really scared me was that I knew if I were put in the same situation again, I would do it over again. I had to protect my mom and my brother. They were all I had.
The idea for the series is to focus on one “character”, tell the story from his point of view (taking him from his community to the streets to wherever his path takes him), and allow the reader to build a relationship with him, so that when he begins to participate in “questionable” behavior of street life, the reader is on “his side”. I have finished the first book of the series (though I have not approached publishers yet) and am working on the second. As I was writing the first book, which I titled Out of Manenberg, I often pictured it as a movie and dreamed about seeing it one day manifest itself in “film” form. I want to make a proper, great quality, feature length film of Out of Manenberg, and though I realize this is extremely ambitious, I know that dreams have to start somewhere. So I have decided to pursue this dream with a little more aggression and I am trying to raise funds to actually MAKE the movie! I have a very talented director friend who is excited and willing to work on the project. All we need is money.
I am trying to raise 1 Million Dollars, which sounds like tons of money but for a feature length film it is merely a drop in the bucket. I started a group on face book “I hope to find 1 million people willing to give 1 dollar each, to make a movie” and I opened a Pay Pal account so that people can give. If you are interested in giving you can click on the “donate” button on the right hand side of your screen or click here. If you want to give but do not wish to use Pay Pal feel free to contact me at capetownbrown@gmail.com. It only takes 1 dollar to become an executive producer of this film! Please help spread the word, even if you can’t give 1 dollar you can help by telling all your friends! As a little incentive, here is the first chapter of the book:
OUT OF MANENBERG - Chapter 1: Learning To Survive
I can’t sleep. Its nights like these where I lay and think. All of my shattered dreams, aspirations, and hopes, of what I could have done, of what I could have been, swirl around in my head like a raging storm. I lay here on this thin mattress with nothing to drown out my loud thoughts except for deafening silence and the sound of rats scratching around the prison floor. Yeah, I have had a rough life, but I truly have no one to blame but myself for the place I am in now. I had an opportunity to make it out of my life, that was destined to go nowhere, and then because of one stupid choice, I threw it all away. I will spend the rest of my life behind these walls, encaged within these bars. How did I get here? There’s no simple answer, but the best place to start is the beginning.
I was born in 1987 in Manenberg, a suburb of Cape Town that has a reputation for violence and gangsterism. I never knew my father, but from what I hear about him, I don’t really care to ever meet him. He lives far away or is dead by now. I don’t really care. I have three brothers and two sisters, all except for two are from different men. I am the oldest. My mom was as loving as she knew how to be. She also didn’t know her father. That’s because her mom was raped by a white police officer. She grew up during a hard time and the white people made it difficult for her to succeed. She had no education and she would try and drink away her problems with alcohol. She didn’t have a job but we never seemed to struggle too much for our basic needs. Well, that is if you consider water, sometimes food and shelter basic needs. Our neighbors would always give us rice and bread when we needed it.
I have always been a natural leader. I am small, but I learned how to use my mouth at a young age. I got into my fare share of trouble because of my mouth, but I also learned how to use it as a deadly weapon, when need be. I have also been in my fair share of fights, and though I am small, I am pretty tough. I remember my first fight. I was seven, and my brother, the second oldest, Andre was four. He came home one day screaming and blood was streaming down his face. Mom had sent him to the store to buy her a cigarette and on the way Melvin, one of the known troublemakers of our area, tried to take his money. Melvin was a thirteen-year-old bully and he got away with it because his older brother was one of the big shots in one of the prominent gangs in our area, the Hard Livings. When Melvin tried to take the money from Andre, my brother knew that the beating he would get from Melvin would not be nearly as bad as the one he would get from my mom if he returned home with no cigarette and no money, so he stood up to him. Melvin hit Andre so hard that he fell and busted his head open on the ground. Then Melvin sat on Andre and took the money from him.
I listened, as Andre stood there crying and bleeding all over the floor. After I had gotten the facts straight, I decided to go settle things with Melvin. No one messes with my little brother. I felt my heart pounding in my chest as I ran to confront Melvin. By the time I got to the shop, Melvin was standing there, smoking the cigarette that was supposed to be my mom’s and he was laughing and telling the story of how he had gotten it, to a group of about five of his friends. I felt a warm sensation all over my body and it felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. Melvin was twice my size and known for his fighting abilities.
I picked up a brick that was lying on the ground and started for him. Before he knew it, I had jumped up onto him and I hit him on the forehead with the brick. As he fell to the ground, I landed on top of him. The brick fell out of my hands and bounced as it hit the ground. My arms went numb as I punched him in the face over and over again. I could feel my knuckles being shredded by his teeth but I could not stop myself. I had never felt that kind of rage before. His friends stood there in shock, not really knowing what to do. When I saw that he was unconscious, I stopped. There I sat, on top of bloody, unconscious Melvin, with a group of kids standing there in absolute shock. I slowly stood up and picked the brick back up, in case some of his friends got any bright ideas. I looked at them and I could tell that I had a wild look in my eyes that scared them; a look of a wild animal on the prowl, ready to devour his next prey. They all just stood there like statues. I announced, “You tell Melvin, when he wakes up, that if he EVER touches my brother again, I will finish what I started.” Pretty big words for a seven year old! But I had heard the older gangsters in our block of flats say things like that before.
Then I remembered my mom’s cigarette and I searched Melvin’s pocket and found a whole rand. I went into the shop and bought the cigarette for my mom and two sweets, one for me and one for Andre. I walked proudly back to my house. I felt a sense of power that I had never felt before. I felt like I ruled the neighborhood. I felt like I could take on a whole army if I had to. When I got back to my house, I gave my mom her cigarette and I gave Andre his sweet and I sat down and told him the whole story.
Fighting was a necessity in my neighborhood. Those who couldn’t fight for themselves, had to walk around with those who could both fight for them and for themselves. The gangs ruled the area and they preyed on the young boys. They recruited from a very young age. If you didn’t join a gang, you were in danger. At least if you were in a gang, you would only have the threat of the rival gang and the protection of your own along with it. If you were not in one, you would have to watch your back all the time for all of them. I hated them. I decided from a young age that I was never going to join a gang.
Andre’s dad was a gangster. He lived with us around that same time. The hatred that I had for that man is not describable with words. Every night, he would sit with his friends, in our kitchen, and smoke buttons until he could barely talk right. I hated him even more when he was in that state. He was an evil man most of the time, but when he was dik geroek , he would put the devil himself to shame. Sometimes he would even pass out right there on the floor. I preferred it when he would just kap om , which was only every now and then, because the other times, which was basically every night, he would end up beating my mom and then he would turn his attention on Andre. He hated Andre and always talked about how he was a “mistake”. He beat every bit of dignity and self-respect that was left in my mom, right out of her.
I remember her from a real young age. Even though it seems I was too young to remember things like that, I can still picture her beautiful face in my mind! I thought she was the most beautiful lady that had ever walked on the face of this earth. She was young, at the ripe age of 19, when I was born. When I was three she got with Andre’s dad and then everything went down hill from there. Their relationship was never that good but he only started really beating her like that when he found out she was pregnant with Andre. He blamed her for getting pregnant and some nights he would make her drink and drink to a dangerous point, to try and abort the baby. Some nights he would beat her and even hit and kick her on her stomach. I was young, and I would just sit there on the floor crying, but those pictures are still engraved in my mind.
When Andre was born, it got even worse. He beat my mom on a nightly basis. By the time Andre was three and I was six, my mom looked like a totally different person to the beautiful young lady that I once remembered. The beatings had added years onto her and she looked like a forty-year-old lady. She had also lost sight in her left eye from one of the more vicious beatings. Her eye was white and cloudy. Her skin was worn and looked like leather and her lips were always swollen. It broke my heart to even look at her because I loved my mom more than anyone else in the world. When I was eight years old, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I came in from playing with friends one night and I found my mom, bleeding and unconscious, on the floor. Then I heard Andre screaming in the back room and I could hear his dad beating him and telling him to shut his mouth. His words slurred together, as they often did when he was dik geroek.
I felt that same feeling that I did in that first fight with Melvin. By then I had gotten used to it because I had been in many more fights over the years. I picked up a screwdriver that was laying in the kitchen and I ran back to the back room. I stopped in the doorway and saw the bastard standing over Andre with his belt in his hands. Andre was curled up on the floor and was crying and pleading for him to stop. “Jou ma se poes kind! Jy’s net soos jou ma!” He continued to hit Andre, with the buckle part of the belt. I could not take it anymore. I felt a rush of rage and then everything turned black. I jumped on his back and stuck the screwdriver into the back of his neck and he immediately fell to the ground. He fell on top of my leg and I had to pull it out from under him to stand up. I went over to Andre and helped him sit up.
His eyes were swollen shut from the beatings and he was bleeding all over. I held him and told him that everything was going to be alright. My heart felt like it was ripped into a hundred pieces. I loved my brother more than anything or anyone else in the world, apart from my mom, and it killed me to see him like that. I started to cry and I sobbed like never before. We just sat there on the floor and I held Andre until he fell asleep in my arms. I was in shock and I just sat there, shaking, crying and I held Andre tight until I eventually fell asleep. I was awoken by a loud blood-curdling scream the next morning. My mom had woken up and came into the room and saw her man laying on the floor in a puddle of dried blood with a screw driver sticking out of the back of his neck. She picked me up and started shaking me, screaming, “What have you done?! What have you done?!” I searched deep within for words, but nothing came out.
She collapsed to the ground and held me tight in her arms and began to sob. I could see that she wasn’t crying because she was sad, but because she was actually relieved. Andre woke up and came over and we all sat there on the floor for hours. Time passed by slowly and we all just sat there and didn’t say a word. Looking back, strangely enough, that was the best time I ever spent with my mom. For the first time ever…maybe the only time…we felt like a real family. We sat there until the night and my mom finally went out to a friend’s house. A little bit later she returned with some men and they took away the body and we never heard anything about it again. The police didn’t get involved and there wasn’t even a funeral. Of course the word got out in the neighborhood, that I had killed a man, which only helped my reputation amongst the kids.
I had killed someone. I felt no remorse, no grief, but that wasn’t the thing that scared me. What really scared me was that I knew if I were put in the same situation again, I would do it over again. I had to protect my mom and my brother. They were all I had.
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