Road to hell: Addict trying to clean up and reconnect with family

It’s closer to a shelter than a shack, but 33-year-old beggar Chenelle calls it home.

She shares the two square metre sticks and tarpaulin corner of Kempton Park with four other people – each with a tiny piece of dry they call their own “space”.

Next to home, a pile of recyclables on the one side and on the other, a pile of ash where she says uniforms raided and burnt their meagre possessions a few days prior.

“They said we’re not allowed to be here, so they set our stuff on fire to chase us away.”

Her first trip down narcotic lane was when she was 19, says Chenelle.

“I started with meth crystal and moved on to heroin. It’s a more cost-effective high,” she says.

“But I’m not using now.”

Yet, it’s drugs that led her to the streets and, she says, “while I am not stupid, I’m here because of the choices I made.”

Before the pavement became her home last year, Chenelle was a housewife and her 12-year-old special-needs son is now “somewhere in Boksburg”, her family still down the road in Kempton Park.

“But I am the weggooi (throwaway) child. My father lived and died on the streets and my mom is still an alcoholic.”

In between shifts on Monument Road, she heads off to a nearby shelter where two meals are served daily.

“On an average day I can make as little as R10. Other days, although rare, I can make up to R200.”

Chenelle says there are regular donors who “I am extremely grateful for as they make a huge difference in my daily survival”.

This is hand-to-mouth living at its toughest. “There is also a lot of rivalry and theft among everyone on the street. So it’s not easy to hang onto what little we have…”

Vic, one of Chenelle’s shanty housemates, moved to Gauteng from the Northern Cape a few years ago, looking for work. But he’s had no luck.

The street is his home and when The Citizen visited, he was busy sorting through the pile of recyclables that was not set alight by the authorities.

Many people would not even let their pets live in this kind of shelter. The contrast between the dump they call home and the fast food drive-thru with luxury cars queuing up next door is startling.

“And there’s more and more people appearing around us, and they are getting younger and younger,” she says.

“Many of them, are young girls who are selling themselves to anyone who’d give them a buck while begging for alms.”

Most of the homeless community settles around the Kempton Park police station for the relative safety it is perceived to provide.

At night, those not lucky enough to share a plastic sheeted roof overhead retire to the pavement in front of some of the off street shops that line the central business district.

Some retailers have installed sprinklers to spray them away though.

“I am trying to reconnect with my family and clean up my act slowly. I know that I can do better in my life, and I plan to make the right choices to get there,” says Chenelle.

– news@citizen.co.za