Posts Tagged ‘family reunion’
Adam wants to work and be with his family, but now that is only a dream
Cape Times, 13 June 2008
HE HEARS their voices all the time – his 20-year-old wife and their eight-month-old baby, phoning from Pietermaritzburg. But before the Congolese family can be reunited, Adam Degol must first rebuild his life in Cape Town.
Separated while fleeing from xenophobic attacks three weeks ago, the family spent 11 days apart with no news of one another, until a Cape Times reader who knew the mother and baby’s whereabouts saw Degol’s picture in the paper and phoned him.
Degol is one of many displaced foreigners trying to reintegrate, go back to work and find a new home for his small family.
“I want to find a place in town, then I can feel secure, and I can bring them back,” said Degol, who’s been staying at Tokai’s Chrysalis Academy.
On Tuesday, Degol arranged a lift with a Chrysalis volunteer to see his previous employer, Ocean Securities, in Parow. The company still owed him more than R3 000 for the 26 12-hour shifts he worked in May.
Though Degol’s time sheets were in on time, the office manager said they couldn’t pay him until he came in person to confirm that he was using the same bank account.
Degol asked to be placed in a security guard post in town. He said he didn’t feel safe to work at Metro Khayelitsha.
But Ocean Securities only has work for him in Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain. The company has contracts in town, but those clients don’t allow foreign workers.
According to management, some of its 100 foreign employees have already returned to work in the townships.
Since guards get placed on the 15th of every month, Degol now awaits his new appointment. Ocean Securities offered to pay him a standby wage in the meantime if he came to the office from 8am to noon every day, but he has no regular transportation from Chrysalis.
He’s also worried about the high transportation costs of living in town far from work.
“I’ll take any job. I can paint, I can do anything,” he said.
Cape Times reader unites young family separated during xenophobic rampages
Cape Times, 5 June 2008
A Congolese man, separated from his young wife and baby for 11 days following the xenophobic attacks in Philippi, has found them safe and sound and staying with a family in Pietermaritzburg, thanks to a Cape Times reader.
Adam Degol was overjoyed to speak to his 20-year-old wife Mafuthi Myid on the telephone on Tuesday evening after a stranger phoned him with information on her whereabouts.
“I’m feeling so nice now,” said Degol from Tokai’s Chrysalis Academy where he has been staying. “I was so worried.”
The stranger had seen Degol’s story in the Cape Times and knew of a displaced Congolese at an Athlone mosque who had been in touch with the family with whom Myid is living.
Then it was a matter of minutes before Degol was reunited with his family on the phone.
The kindness of strangers along the way had helped the mother and baby to safety.
The night of the attacks, Myid was home alone with her eight-month-old child, waiting for Degol to return from work.
She heard loud knocking at the door, then six men forced their way into her home in Philippi.
“They wanted to get inside the house to take our things. There was nothing I could do. There was no place to hide,” said Myid.
After the mob left with the family’s possessions, she dug up some stashed savings and took off running with her baby.
She found a group of people gathered behind her house and asked for directions to Cape Town Station, where she intended to board a train to Durban.
She had briefly stayed with a family in Pietermaritzburg on her way to Cape Town a month ago.
On the train, Myid met a South African woman from Durban who took her under her wing until they arrived safely in Pietermaritzburg. The woman gave only her first name as Nonhlanhla.
Myid would like her husband to join her and the baby in Pietermaritzburg, but he would rather bring them back to Cape Town as soon as his job is stable.
Degol was especially grateful to three volunteers at Chrysalis Academy who had made 400 flyers and called police stations in search of his family – Benedicte Bergman, Nicola Tyson and Tamaryne Lindeque.
