“do not go gentle into that good night / rage rage against the dying of the light”

Cape Times, 3 June 2008

AN ERRANT beach ball bounced towards us, chased by a small Somali boy.

I stuck out my foot to stop it. The boy giggled and hugged my leg with all his might – a warm welcome to the Chrysalis Academy.

Here in the idyllic surrounds of the Table Mountain National Park in Tokai, past the towering pines, the campgrounds and the barbecues, has sprung one of the largest informal shelters for displaced foreigners.

It’s also one of the nicest. The 310 Somalis, Congolese, Zimbabweans and other displaced foreigners are staying in dormitories regularly used for at-risk youth who come to take part in free social crime-prevention programmes and leadership classes.

In the small parking lot where we pulled up, volunteers were serving lunch outside, piling rice and chicken high on to hot pink plastic plates.

A group of women sat on stools in a circle washing clothes in a plastic basin. Behind them, on beds of green plants, kids’ shirts and pants were laid out in the sun to dry.

A toddler peeked out of the driver’s side window of a royal blue bakkie. I asked him how old he was.

“He’s three,” came a voice from behind me – his mother, Horia Ahmed Hassan.

She wore a brightly coloured sweater over a full-length hijab, and her head was draped in a scarf.

She arrived from Vredenburg two weeks ago with her kids, she said. Her husband died in a fork lift accident eight months ago.

“They didn’t even given him a funeral. They didn’t do anything.” Tears fell from her face on to the ground like seeds.

The family came from Mogadishu 10 years ago. Her husband had worked for the contractor for seven years.

Since then, the stay-at-home mother of four has been staying with her brothers, who owned a grocery shop, and living on the financial support of her friends.

Then, the shop they’ve had for six years was attacked by xenophobic South Africans. They packed what they had left into the blue bakkie and went to the police, who directed them here.

Safe for the time being, she’s now worried about her 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter, both of whom should be in school.

“I’m worried for the education of the children,” she said. “What do we do? Life is |expensive.”

By now, a crowd of Somalis had gathered around us. All had similar stories.

One man held out a string of keys, “Left the bakkie, but still have these!” Everyone laughed.

Now that there was an audience, Ahmad Mohammed Ali, an ex-policeman from Somalia came over and began raving angrily about the South African police.

“They make the problems!” He yelled, swatting at the air with his baseball cap. “They are criminals.”

Under the guise of protecting their shops, the police would tell them where to park and then steal their vans and their money, he alleged.

The crowd murmured its agreement.

It’s nothing we haven’t already heard, so I asked them to show us their living |quarters.

We wound through a small path in the grass and crossed into a courtyard large enough for a soccer game.

In front of us was a two-story, grey-concrete building with outside hallways facing the courtyard.

We climbed up a flight of green wooden stairs to the sleeping quarters. Clothes hung everywhere.

The foreigners had separated themselves into rooms by nationality, one of my guides said. Each room was jammed with 14 single beds set so close that the metal frames touched each other.

There were nearly enough mattresses for everyone, though some sleep on the wooden floors.

Back downstairs, I got a tour of the open showers and the sole toilet in the camp. They take turns cleaning it.

Next, they took me to see the cafeteria. A large assembly hall had been cleared out, a small group sat at the far end watching a small TV, donated by a church volunteer.

Because I’m a reporter, they took special interest in showing me their news collection. On a large chalkboard, they had cut out articles and pictures of the xenophobic attacks and taped them into a collage.

Someone makes a daily run into town for newspapers, they said.

Behind a screen, I saw cardboard boxes stacked high with donated clothes. Every day at 4pm, the residents form a line and are given five minutes to choose their new clothes.

“We won’t forget that they are helping us,” said my guide, showing me the white plastic wristband that entitles him and anyone who has one to food and supplies. On it was handwritten with a black marker his name and number: Abderahman Hassen, 155.

We went back outside and into another courtyard. Twenty kids of all nationalities chased each other around.

A 25-year-old student from UCT, who heard about the camp from her roommate, held a crying girl in her arms.

“We are waiting for someone to tell us what to do,” said Hassen.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen. But nothing will be the same as before.”

Photo by Michael Walker

Cape Times, 2 June 2008

THE last time he saw them was on the eve of the xenophobic attacks in Philippi.

Ten days later, Congolese Adam Degol still has no leads on the whereabouts of his 20-year-old wife, Mafuthi Myid, or their eight-month-old son, Zico.

He’s lost everything he owned, but can only think about his wife.

He called for her to join him just a month ago, only to lose her just as quickly.

As Degol was returning home to Lower Crossroads on the evening of May 25, seven teenagers he’d never seen before surrounded him.

They said: “We don’t need any foreigners in this area,” as they took his money and cell- phone. Then they told him that they’d kill him if he stayed.

So, the man who has lived in Cape Town fir five months ran.

When he didn’t see his family at the police station, he tried to go back to Philippi. His friends held him back, saying the mobs would kill him.

That night, as displaced foreigners were dropped off by the busload, he waited up to see if they would be among them.

Then, a bus came to take him to a church at N1 City, and over the next three days, Degol was shuttled from church to church, wherever there was space for the night.

He asked everyone he met about his wife and baby, but he doesn’t even have a photo to show because couldn’t go home and fetch one.

Now he is housed with over 200 other displaced foreigners at Chrysalis Academy in Tokai.

Last Wednesday, Tamaryne Lindeque, a volunteer at Chrysalis, heard his story and together they drove out to all the churches and community halls in Rondebosch, Youngsfield, Nyanga and Philippi.

They returned empty-handed.

Because Myid arrived less than a month before the attacks, few people knew her, said Degol. He hopes that she escaped to Durban to her brother or has taken refuge at a stranger’s house.

“I heard some people are hiding foreigners in their homes,” said Degol. “I hope someone is doing this for her.”