After eight months on the streets, Elias was homesick. Thomas Khoza, a contrib utor to Homeless Talk, helped the streetchild find his way home again
Elias, aged 10, came into our lives at 1am on a warm September night in Hillbr ow. He and three other street children were asleep on a patch of earth at the corner of Pretoria and Claim streets.
It was the start of an amazing friendship. Homeless Talk was researching the e xperiences of children held in adult jails. Elias told us how after stealing a gongo (car radio) and its speakers he was stretched across a table and shambo
ked by two white policeman – four strokes (”I could not sit down for many days because my bumps were sore”); how he was thrown into a cell with seven adult
prisoners
(”the fathers made me a woman because I was beautiful”); and how a fat white p oliceman called Cobra ”used to pierce me with a sewing needle and beat me with a donkeybill”.
This all happened earlier this year, when Elias was nine. Now eight months on the streets had taken their toll. Elias was one emaciated, barefoot little boy , homesick for his mother. As we walked down the night street he started to cr y.
Getting Elias home to Heidelberg was not as easy as it might seem. Because he was starving, we had left money with his friend at Chicken Lickin’ to buy him food. Already his face and limbs had started to put on flesh.
Street Wise, the street kids drop-in centre, offered to give Elias a shower an d some clothes. I deposited him there on the Friday, but a couple of hours lat er received a telephone call. The fiercely independent Elias, when asked to pl ay with the other children, had run away!
When we went to the fallback meeting place on Saturday morning, his friends to ld us that he had gone to play cricket at Pirates Club in Greenside! He had le ft by the time we got there, but at mid-day, as we searched the streets of Hil lbrow, there suddenly was Elias rushing towards us and throwing himself into m y arms.
On the way to Rosebank, a ragged white begger stood at the robot in Oxford Roa d. In a swift, silent gesture, I saw Elias’s hand slip out to give him a coin.
What followed must have seemed like a dream for Elias. First to Mr Price in Ro sebank for jeans, T-shirts, underwear and sandals. (Elias took a real shine to those sandals.)
Then to the Rosebank Hotel, where duty manager Bridget opened up the gymnasium for us, to give Elias a luxury shower.
Afterwards, we sat down for a Coke, but Elias left the table to gaze at the be autiful swimming pool. Yes, he would like to swim! Wearing his jazzy new under pants, Elias proved to be an enthusiastic swimmer, with his doggy-paddle strok e and a great deal of splashing. He swam for a few seconds then stopped, buryi ng his face in his hands as he wiped away the water. He completely ignored the circle of
silently watching whites, basking like lobsters in the sun around the poolsid
e.
Elias splashed around happily until he was tired. Then we left for Heidelberg.
He was fast asleep in the back of the car as we approached his home. I woke hi m and he became tremendously excited as he recognised familiar landmarks. ”Tur n left! Left! Straight on! Right!” he cried in a shrill voice, suddenly discov ering a remarkable proficiency in English.
Finally we came to Rathanda location and Elias directed us to his house, a tin shack on the edge of an informal settlement. Below us was a beautiful valley
with a river, flanked by rolling green hills.
The first thing we saw was that a funeral was in progress, with a large tent e rected next to Elias’s shack. We looked at one another in silence and my heart missed a beat. Could it be one of Elias’s family?
We walked slowly towards the old tin house and when we realised that the funer al was not in Elias’s home we started breathing normally.
An old lady emerged from the tin house. She was Elias’s grandmother and she cl apped her hands in joy when she saw him. She sent someone to call Elias’s pare nts. His mother came first and folded the lost child into her arms.
Elias had told us that he had not returned home before because he was afraid o f his father, who beat him, and all the questions he would have. So when his f ather, a serious-looking man, arrived we explained what had happened to Elias.
He told us of his problems with Elias: the glue-sniffing and the three schools that Elias had run away from without reason.
We told him that we would return in four weeks to see how Elias was settling i n and that if anyone beat Elias there would be serious trouble.
Then it was time to leave. We handed protein-enriched food substitutes and a v itamin tonic for Elias to his grandmother, with instructions on the dosages. W e looked for Elias, to say goodbye. But he had vanished again, this time happi ly, into the safer streets of home.
l On our follow-up visit four Saturdays later, Elias had vanished again. A nei ghbour’s child took us to Elias’s favourite haunts: a pool for swimming in a g ravel pit; the local coalyard; a shebeen. No luck. When we caught up with Elia s the following weekend he explained he had been watching bulldozers at work.
It would be nice this Christmastide to report a happy ending. But happy ending s are for story books, not real life. Far from having put on weight, Elias was even more emaciated than he had been when on the streets. He complained of he
adaches and a pain in the left side of his chest. His skin seemed sallow and d uring that day’s trip to Heidelberg’s Adventure games park, while coming spora dically to life, Elias spent long periods gazing silently at some inner vision on the fa
r horizon. He would not let go of my hand.
On December 23, Elias was due to see a Johannesburg paediatrician for a thorou gh check-up. We’ll let you know how the Little Hunter, as we call him, gets on .
An earlier version of this article appears in the current issue of Homeless Ta lk