When I was younger I volunteered for a charity called Mamelani Projects whose mission is to help young men coming off the streets or out of orphanages at 18.
Sadly the system doesn't really look after them once they become adults. Most of them are plucked from the streets as little boys and then handed back to them as young men with no coping skills to stop them from landing up exactly where they were before.
Mamelani offers different life skills, counselling, internships at various businesses and general support to help these young men adjust to life on the outside of a homestead or orphanage and try and create better lives for themselves and their families in the future.
I used to do weekly drama workshops with 12 of these young men, each with his own story, some worse than others but all beyond what I could imagine surviving in my life.
Gangsters instead of parents, drugs instead of food, beer instead of a blanket - these things were normal to them. But somehow life hadn't totally hardened them and over the months and years we worked together they opened up and shared their hopes and fears.
We used to role play as a way of preparing them for interviews and we'd journal to help them express their feelings. None of my boys had finished school, some could barely read or write yet they were all profoundly deep and honest in their writing.
It didn't take me long to realise we could make something special, I asked them to think about what they would want others to know about them and how they would like to be seen and understood. We workshopped for a few weeks and by the end of it each boy had contributed at least a sentence to this poem:
We come out of the shadows
Scratching in a bin
Breaking the bread among us
To find the family within
My mind thinks, my heart beats
Big eyes with nothing to see
Searching for the way forward
Through the alleys and the streets
My life is worth it
I’ll never take chances again
Where struggles begin so do journeys
We will be great men
Pushing a heavy load
Walking the streets at night
We deal with creeps every day
But out of the dark comes the light
I wont demand it, I’ll work for it
But put your trust in me and that you won’t regret
Coz I won’t let my past dictate my future
I’m too grateful for the family I have met.
I arranged a charity golf day for Mamelani and invited everyone I could think of. The boys and I choreographed a movement piece which they then performed whilst reciting the poem at the event. They were amazing and we raised nearly R80,000.
When I got a full time job I couldn't do my weekly classes with them anymore but have kept in touch with most of them over the years since. One in particular.
Charlton's life has been hard, in every sense of the word. He is from a gang ridden area and had no positive adult role models growing up. He spent his childhood on and off the streets, living under bridges or in boys homes and getting in to trouble. Mamelani found him when he turned 18 and he joined their programme and my class. It was quickly obvious to me that he was a good soul under a tough survival exterior. I found him a place to stay and he slowly came out of his shell and washed off the streets figuratively and literally.
A few years ago he decided to go home. I would love to be able to say it's been great and he's rehabilitated but sadly that's far from the truth.
His life has been drugs, alcohol, gangs and fighting for so long that it's the most familiar path for him no matter how painful or destructive. In the last year he's spent time in prison for fighting and nearly been killed by a gangster who stabbed him quite literally in the heart.
Every time I see one of the 20 or so numbers I have saved for him I hold my breath, fearing the worst. He asks for help but then doesn't follow through and I know enough to know I can not help him until he wants to help himself.
On Saturday I got a Whatsapp saying he was coming in to Cape Town to see a friend, immediately I worried about what kind of friend he was meeting and why. I called him and found out he was on the train with his brother, William, this in itself was a good sign. William is younger than Charlton, has not yet been so hardened by the streets and is desperate to see his brother safe.
After a lot of back and forth over the noise of the train I finally figured out they were making the trip in to town to go to a youth centre for help.
I said I'd meet up with them as soon as they were done, put down the phone and burst into tears. I was so proud, so relieved, so grateful and so hopeful all at once that I was totally overcome with emotion.
I've learnt not to hope for too much, to keep my expectations low and to not let him see my disappointment, I'm not used to having to hold back tears for all the right reasons!
I met up with them a few hours later and although it was a little tough to see how much harder Charlton is looking after prison it was good to see that within a few minutes the same funny, shy and earnest guy was shining through his eyes.
They said the meeting has been motivating and inspiring. I'm going to find out more about the mentor programme and what online courses they could do from home but them going of their own accord was a hugely positive step which in itself needs to be recognised.