Life happens! Sometimes we may think we are doing the right thing, but we are thinking with our hearts and not our heads. The biggest challenge when living on the streets is trying to reconnect with family. You have to first restore YOURSELF, before you can rebuild relationships with others.
*Fadiel was so excited: he had been promised a job on a fishing trawler and was reuniting with his wife. But the job never materialised and his wife’s drug habit made his living environment unbearable. Fadiel found himself back on the streets.
These setbacks were not due to a lack of trying, but rather, Fadiel’s expectation that if he changed, then perhaps his situation would change. This is one the biggest challenge in our support work and we teach our clients to realise that while situations may not change, the way they approach these situations may change significantly as they grow.
This is why we believe in a revolving door philosophy at The Humanity Hub. Sometimes, things do not go as planned, and our clients find themselves seeking refuge on the streets, the only place where the world seems to make sense at times like these.
*Fadiel continues to work with our fieldworker and remains hopeful, notwithstanding a deep sense of loss of the life he thought he could have with his spouse after he ‘cleaned’ himself up.
Grief is an emotion that taunts our clients. They grieve for the person they once were, learn to accept the person they are, and work towards being the person that they hope to become. Having to lose oneself in order to find oneself is the greatest challenge to living a dignified life, especially when you are homeless, part of the ‘weeds’ plaguing the otherwise pristine sidewalks of the likes of Sea Point and Camps Bay.
*not his real name