I had decided to carry on doing what I do best, which is connecting with my customers and selling books. When I got to Empire Road the next morning I was surprised to see how much things had changed. My friend Siyabonga was still there, doing what he did best – selling pity (or you can call it begging), but there were new faces there that day. He told me these new faces were now free to sell and beg and wash car windows at Empire Road because the bully Bongani was killed in a fight – he had been stabbed in the neck while fighting for ownership of that street corner and had died instantly. While this was sad news, I didn’t know anyone else who would choose to die for a street corner. Where’s the honour in dying for a begging spot? Yet many brothers die for stupid reasons. Bongani died young to prove that he was the street king of Empire Road.
Remember I told you that I didn’t fight back when Bongani forced me to wait under the tree for him to finish begging? If I had fought back, perhaps it would be me who was dead, killed by Bongani for a begging spot at Empire Road. Today he is history but I’m still here telling you about his sad death. I’m still here because of what I learned at a very young age: cowards live longer, and never argue with a fool.
One day I met a lady who later became a friend of mine. Her name is Beverly Crooks. She used to see me selling books at Empire Road when she dropped her son at Wits University. Then one day she parked under the bridge and called me over. She told me about the Herbalife World of Opportunities and the Herbalife distributing business. It sounded like a cool idea. I thought about all the old people when I was a carer in old age homes years before who would buy those nutritional products she showed me. I thought I’d make a fortune out of being a Herbalife distributor. I was sold even before she finished explaining everything to me. When she told me about the cost of a start-up kit, I was so excited I didn’t tell her that I didn’t have the money – I knew that my friends at Malnor Publications trusted and believed in me. I called them and explained the whole Herbalife thing and asked for a R1000 loan – not to give to me but to put in Beverly’s bank account. They deposited the money and the following morning Beverly brought me my start-up kit.
There’s nothing much more to tell about my Herbalife business except that it was a flop. I failed to get customers and I was very quick to give up, probably because I never had to pay for it and we all know that if you never paid for something, you don’t pay attention.
Still, my life was improving. I felt good. I felt I had a chance to regain what I had lost.
I now had a place to go home to, there was always food on my table even if I slept late and didn’t go sell books. My life was much better than when I lived under the bridge but I missed my friends; I missed getting high and forgetting all the worries, struggles and challenges that come with being alive.
I admit I was lucky when God gave me a second and a third chance. But I blew them all.
I went for some dope after three months of being clean and then there was no turning back. I took my friend Siyabonga up to Hillbrow to surprise him with some good stuff that we both liked to smoke while I was still a junkie. I burned all the bridges with my friends who were helping me with my rental payments and with my landlord, but fortunately not with my friends who I used to sleep with under the bridge. I still had a place to call home since they still had my clothes they’d taken as a rental payment while I was still new on the streets.
So there I was, once again, with nothing left but a blanket and a few clothes and a bagful of books. My friends welcomed me with open arms; they didn’t like it when one of us made it out. They used to say ‘you can take a street kid out of the streets but you can never take the streets out of him’. It felt like an accurate description of who I had become.
Now that I was back, words like ‘I told you so’ were often thrown at me. And it did hurt a lot – I felt ashamed and humiliated by my failure. I even started believing that I was bewitched. Regrets always come later, right? Now that I was back there was nothing glamorous about being on the streets again and I wished I were still living in that space that my friends had so kindly rented for me at Central Park. But when I had it I wanted to be homeless again! I just didn’t know what I wanted. Drugs were driving me crazy. Sometimes I blamed God for creating me. Sometimes I thanked God for saving my life when I tried to kill myself. The truth is I was alive but didn’t know what I was living for. I had lost my job, forgotten my family and lost everything I ever worked for and cared about.
I was homeless the first time because I didn’t have a choice, or at least that was what I thought. I was homeless because I was a drug addict and an alcoholic and had lost my job. I had tried to kill myself to escape my life but survived and been given a second chance. Those were the reasons I had become homeless but now I had no excuses. Now I was homeless out of choice because I missed being homeless! I had been offered a fresh start and been given a roof over my head but I chose instead to go live under the bridge again and smoke drugs instead.
This time I had given up on life completely. I was just like any other homeless person: not caring about my oral hygiene, not bathing. I didn’t care what people thought or said about me or even about being alive. I didn’t care about my collectable first-edition books. All I knew was how to hustle from the pavement and tell people in their cars about my books. Every cent I made I used to buy more drugs. I couldn’t care less about my life.
I lived like this for many months, almost a year, until one day I found something that helped me change my ways for good. I started reading a book entitled A Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I know I’ll be thinking about that book until the day I die. It had the answers to my questions about why I was alive, whether my life matters and what on earth am I here for. That book helped me to get closer to God and to value my life beyond survival on the streets. I wanted to improve my life, and be happy like God planned life for us. After reading that book I knew I had to change. Then I bought a novel called Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.
Sophie Amundsen is fourteen years old, when the book begins, living in Norway. She begins a strange correspondence course in philosophy. Every day, a letter comes to her mailbox that contains a few questions and then later in the day a package comes with some typed pages describing the ideas of a philosopher who dealt with the issues raised by the questions. Although at first she does not know, later on Sophie learns that Alberto Knox is the name of the philosopher who is teaching her. He sends her packages via his dog Hermes. Alberto first tells Sophie that philosophy is extremely relevant to life and that if we don’t question and ponder our very existence we aren’t really living. Then he proceeds to go through the history of Western philosophy. Alberto teaches Sophie about the ancient myths that people had in the days before they tried to come up with natural explanations for the processes in the world. Then she learns about the natural philosophers who were concerned with change. Next Alberto describes Democritus and the theory of indivisible atoms underlying all of nature as well as the concept of fate.
But I digress with this paraphrasing of Sophie’s story. The point is, Sophie’s story helped me win myself back because I learned that if we don’t question and think about our existence then we aren’t really living. After that, I only read self-help manuals. I read many different authors like Joseph Prince, Dr JC Maxwell, TD Jakes, Fredrick K Mamabolo, Erwin W Lutzer, Henry Blackaby and many others who write books that make you want to be a better person. I believe that they helped me become something better than I was.
I told my friends under the bridge that I had lived without drugs for more than two months in Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital and I didn’t die, so we could all win the war against that killer addiction. They laughed, saying that if I had won, why I was going back to living under the bridge with them. I won’t lie, those words hurt, not just a bit – they hurt me so much that they fuelled my desire to keep going for days without smoking. Books were my new drugs and I was really addicted. Most of the guys I lived under the bridge with were bull
ies and dream crushers. If I listened to all the things they were saying, I would still be living under the bridge, smoking rocks or possibly be as dead as most of them are today. Instead I chose to listen to what my books were telling me, that nothing is impossible.
Like I already mentioned, I’m not a saint, but I do go to church and I believe in God. It also makes me happy to share what little I have with others, no matter what it is. That’s how I was raised. My mother used to say giving is a gift for the giver and that we should give so we can receive. I used my mom’s advice and started a feeding scheme by sharing what little I had with my brothers who lived under the Nelson Mandela Bridge with me. After selling my books every day I went to the shop with the money I made and bought packs of soup and loaves of bread for them to eat in the morning before we went to hustle. I know drug addicts only care about getting high so they buy drugs then wake up hungry in the morning and look for food in the trash bins all over the city of Johannesburg. At first they laughed at me and called me Father Theresa, but the truth was that they liked what I was doing. I was happy that I was making a difference with the money I could’ve been wasting on drugs. I’d rather be the one making people smile than the one everyone laughed at.
My idea was a success. Friends from other street corners began visiting us for a cup of soup and four slices of bread before going to hustle in the mornings. My bread and soup become as famous as any drug. Now that I was off the drugs I was able to save some money for my other needs. My friend Henry, who was a bartender at a local club called Emashanganeni, used to keep the money for me.
Then I met a young man who was a student at the university. His name is Peter Walters. He used to drive past me on his way to Wits and when the traffic light turned red I would get lucky and I could talk to him about books. Every time he stopped I smiled because he always paid R100 for any book he liked. Meeting Peter Walters was a blessing. He was a paying customer with a golden heart. He is like a brother to me. One morning he gave me a letter telling me that he was about to graduate from Wits University, and that he’d like to help me with a contribution of R1000 each month. When I first read that letter I couldn’t believe my eyes. Never before had I heard of a young man offering to help a stranger on the street with a percentage of his first salary. To me, Peter Walters was heaven sent. I simply had to wait for him to get a job and get paid his first salary. Peter had faith in me because he wrote me that letter before he even had a job. This time I wanted to prove that people’s faith in me was justified. I had already been clean for more than 9 months. In the eyes of my homeless friends I was a champion because I gave up drugs when everybody said I’d never be able to do it after relapsing after being clean for more than two months and losing my pride and accommodation again.
You’d be surprised to know that it has been more than two years since that letter and Peter Walters still sends me that R1000 every month.
The return of the Pavement Bookworm
GOD ENJOYED BLESSING ME just as much as I enjoyed blessing others. He kept showering me with blessing after blessing, which made me realise that givers really never lack. One afternoon, I was waiting for a customer to come out from the university and get his book, so I could give my friend Henry some money to keep for me. I was sitting on the pavement reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. My pile of books was as nicely organised as always so if I stood up I could lift them up neatly and continue selling. I wasn’t really enjoying the book but couldn’t stop reading. I thought the author had something against Christianity and I wanted to know what that was. The story was about a mysterious world of conspiracy and secret codes, and some historical documents that had been hidden for many centuries by the church. I got hooked from the first page. While I was reading, a guy came towards me with a big smile on his face, and a big digital camera in his hands.
He greeted me and asked, ‘My brother, what made you decide to come sit on the pavement in the middle of the road and read The Da Vinci Code?’
He still had a smile on his face and seemed very kind and I prayed to God that the guys didn’t show up because I knew they would take something from him, either his camera or his wallet.
‘My good brother, what you see here is a mobile bookshop, not just a guy who got bored and decided to sit in the middle of the street with a pile of books and read,’ I replied.
He asked what books I was selling and how much I charge for each book. I told him that my books don’t all cost the same because I value a book according to how good it is. Then I gave him the synopsis of a few books I had in my pile. He was very impressed and asked if it was okay if he made a video of me telling him about my books and a little bit more about myself, like who I was, where I was from and what made me sell books on the street. I thought, why not? In Sir Richard Branson’s book Screw It Let’s Do It he liked trying new things and he liked having fun. I was having fun sharing my story and telling him about my books. I always liked telling people about books.
I never intended to be the Pavement Bookworm when I did that video interview with Mr Tebogo Malope. I didn’t know that an ordinary young dark-skinned man like me had a means to share my story with the world, or that Mr Malope would change my life with the simple two-minute video clip he made. What I had in mind was that he would make this video clip and play it for some township boys. Maybe they could learn a thing or two about drug abuse from my experience, and maybe they’d learn from my stupid mistakes and want to quit just like I did. Remember, when Tebogo made that video I was already victorious over drug addiction.
I was a champion to my homeless friends because I used the same money we would’ve wasted on drugs together to do something for everybody’s benefit. Everyone was benefiting from my book sales. I bought soup and bread for all of us and gave the rest of the money to Henry to keep for me. But some guys hated me for what I was doing and called me names, saying that I thought that I was someone. They suffered from a syndrome known as PHD (Pull Him Down). They’d liked me, though, when they thought that we were all in it together and that drugs would kill us all.
Although it was only nine months since I had stopped doing drugs I had gone a long way in the fight against drug abuse. Many of my customers at Empire remember how hard I was trying; I even asked them to buy tablets called Super Tags to cure people who wanted to quit but were afraid of the symptoms, side effects and cravings caused by withdrawal from the drugs. It was not easy but some people bought us a few bottles of Super Tags at R500 a box. I wouldn’t say we failed because three guys were able to stop, admittedly two of them relapsed but one is still clean as I’m telling this story to you today.
After my video interview with Tebogo Malope went viral on the internet, things turned messy. Everybody wanted to know who I was and if the so-called Pavement Bookworm really existed or if it was just another work of fiction. Media people from TV and newspapers came to visit me on Empire Road to follow up on the story.
I was in every newspaper; even ones I didn’t know existed. Radio stations invited me for studio interviews and I received a lot of gifts. I was getting a lot of book gifts too and I didn’t know where to keep them. When Henry saw my story in the newspaper he did not only keep money safe for me, he started keeping the books too. People of all races and classes visited me and even people who used to ignore me started smiling and wanting to know more about me.
Once again I had a choice about whether to sleep in a cheap hotel or camp with my buddies under the Nelson Mandela Bridge. The publicity one video clip gave me is the media attention that many celebrities seek and will do all sorts of things to get. Many companies pay loads of money for the advertising my mobile bookshop was getting. I made friends with authors who came to visit me to give me their book gifts. I was making money but it was hard to get off the streets because my brothers depended on me for their morning soup and bread. I was the only homeless man I knew with a Twitter account and a Facebook page, and my phone began ringing non-stop.
By the end of 2012, I had made
enough money to go and visit my family in KwaZulu-Natal after many years. They knew that I was still alive because the Pavement Bookworm was doing the rounds in the media. At least I didn’t have to tell them my story.
I bought everything brand new from head to toe and some gifts for uMa and my brothers. I still had uMa’s contact number but I didn’t call because I wanted to surprise them. After travelling for more than seven hundred kilometres crammed in a taxi we arrived at my beautiful hometown of Port Shepstone. I took another taxi to Oshabeni where my home is.
It felt good being home again. My mother was happy to see me. My family had some questions for me – Where had I been? How had it been? Why it had been so long since I had made contact or sent money? Some asked if I had missed them. It was very emotional. People were very happy to see me again – even those who used to gossip about when I got stabbed, dropped out of school and tried to kill myself and called me a loser and a bad influence and nsangwini (weed addict). All was forgotten; it was like it never happened. It felt like I had a new body. My holiday was not very long because the City of Gold was calling me back, I had more dreams and they were bigger than the small town Oshabeni. If I wanted my dreams to come true I had to go back to the gold digger’s city. Look at this book you’re reading; it is one of my dreams.
I didn’t need to pack because I lived like a rat in Johannesburg. I took a bus from Oslo Beach that arrived at 5:30 am at Park Station in Johannesburg. I waited in the waiting area for the sun to rise and then went to get a few books from Henry’s place. On my way I received a call from a lady called Twanji Kalula who works for a morning show called Expresso on SABC 3. They wanted to do an interview with the Pavement Bookworm. I gave her the green light and she said she’d meet me at Empire Road with her crew at 9:30 the next morning. I was early as usual and arranged my books neatly. I started selling books while I waited for Twanji and her Expresso crew to show up. What I didn’t know was that the media attention had turned my friends sour.
The Pavement Bookworm Page 7
