What are you grateful for?

Bongani was murdered last weekend.

May you find your peace in the big bottle store of the skies.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Our hatred and brutality to each other is well documented. Open a newspaper and most pages are filled with murder, thievery and general disregard for our fellow inhabitants. But every so often there’s hope to be found that we are not our own worst enemy. That the human spirit remains and proof that we will not be the destruction of all that binds us to humanity.

I found inspiration in these events and would like to share it with you.

His name is Bongani. He is homeless. He is an alcoholic.

I’ve known him for about seven years. You see he is a car guard on a main street littered with clubs, bars and restaurants. His face is battered by the effects of living on the street. Scars of battles lost and bruises reflect him to be older than he actually is. If you can decipher his rumblings, at most times he is incoherent and mumbles on about being ‘the baas of the street’. He regularly erupts into violent coughing spasms that rack his body and leave him slumping against the wall in pain, stand up after a few minutes and light another newspaper cigarette, the remains of stompies that he has scavenged.

Without fail you will find him every evening with a drink or in the process of getting drunk. He loves his beer but beer is expensive. Most of the time you find him in a lovers embrace with a bag of papsak. When he drinks he likes to cause kak. I’ve seen him on numerous occasions being beaten up for antagonizing and repeatedly trying to start fights . Once he got hit by a taxi and after a few seconds he stood up, retrieved his spilt beer and took a long sip before collapsing in a beautiful heap to the amazement of his audience.

He says he drinks to keep warm. More likely he drinks because he is an alcoholic. He doesn’t remember yesterday and probably doesn’t care about tomorrow until it’s present.

He has a small suitcase filled with clothes. That constitutes his entire wardrobe. All his possessions in a dirty suitcase older than him. No family, one of the countries forgotten. The irony is that sometimes he doesn’t even know who he is. He sleeps behind a car wash or on more permanent basis he sleep where he passes out. The latter, being the more favored option.

So there I was doing something ordinary something everyone has done. Ordering Take aways. Bongani walks up to the take away window with his usual stagger and empties his pockets with hand that shakes with acknowledgement of alcoholic comsumption. The metal thud as coins meet wood. He counts the money with eyes of a man who has no more. He checks then rechecks.

“Cann I hav wone beer pleeze” his voice slurring the words yet strained with control.

He gathers up the rest of his change and deposits into a charity tin. It is exactly R2.40.

I ask him why?

When he needs it.

He says : "Summ uther peeple needz more dhen me."

Respect.

Now that is gratitude.