My husband Luke Visagie and I lived in Benoni from March 2014 to March 2015.
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We spent the last year of our time living in Benoni.
I wanted to write to the Benoni City Times about Benoni increasingly turning into a huge rubbish heap, because of the garbage on the streets, pavements, in the parks and, well, all over.
At the time, I was spending a lot of time walking and cycling around Benoni so I’d begun to notice these things, that we often miss when we drive.
Our time in Benoni was a difficult one, we were without a vehicle (well, without any vehicle that runs with an engine).
My friend took us in to what we are now dubbing a halfway house in Northmead, where people from our circle end up when they are between relationships, between jobs, between homes and just in those hazy periods of limbo that happen in life when you’re unsure of where things are headed.
Owing to this period of calmness, I arrived in Benoni uncertain and I left with a plan.
Much had happened – my regular clients were hiring me again and again, I was doing more and more of my own work, I got married, we got a house and we moved overseas.
I can say without a doubt that my time in Benoni played a pivotal part in my life, but it all began long before I lived there.
My husband spent most of his childhood and life on the East Rand, and particularly in Benoni.
After I started driving, most of my long drives were to friends in Benoni and I formed spiritual bonds there that will never be broken.
Today, most of my South African friends still live in Benoni, so I feel that many pieces of my heart still reside there.
I am writing this sitting in my house with a view of the Adriatic from my window, but my mind is thinking back to all the laughs, cries and cycling to Ebotse, Northmead Square and Lakeside.
I remember our frustrating visits to Home Affairs and our makeshift wedding in Brakpan.
I recall all these things and I can’t help but smile, because I did love my time there.
“Doesn’t the old hood produce some interesting gals – Charlene, Charlize, Grace Mugabe, you, me…”
Author Jennifer Ridyard tweeted me a couple of weeks back.
I thought about it, then wrote this: “I’m proud I hail from a place that was once the home of a princess, Hollywood actress, and authors like myself. As for the modern-day Eva Braun that shares it with us, even Benoni has a few scars.”
I hope that Benoni is being cleaned up and that the public areas are becoming a growing pleasure to visitors and residents.
I wish to see this change on our visit to SA later this year, because it will be a joy to see the town progress.
Regardless of where I might end up in life, I’ll always regard Benoni as a special place.
It was there that I, in a sense, found peace, purpose, love and truth.
I love Benoni, because we’ve got to admit it, there’s just something about that old mining town East of Jo’burg that unites so many of us.
Also read:
Stranger buys elderly man a kettle
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