In the 80’s in Pretoria, Church Square was the daily retreat of vagrants, who slept all over the city, but came there in the day to do their ablutions and to recuperate from whatever had hit them during the night.
Recollections of a woman bus driver: Vagrants – 80s in Pretoria
Anna walked into the women’s rest room as if nothing had happened.
It was a warm evening and the supervisor, Aunt Rachel, sat outside, wiping her round face with a lacy, perfumed handkerchief.
When Anna appeared again she said: “Annatjie” with a question mark in her voice. “Did you really want to die?”
Anna nodded, embarrassed.
They were quiet for a while and heard the clutter of high heels inside the restroom, where the mirrors and basins were. A well-dressed young girl appeared and waited in the door, exuding the lingering smell of expensive perfume.
“I wish I looked like her” Anna nodded in the direction of the girl.
The supervisor pursed her lips. They both knew that the girl would be picked up by some stranger in a smart car and that this was not a life to aspire to.
Rachel studied Anna’s round leathery brown face, the mark of a constant sun left on the skin of a vagrant – her eyes light brown and shining.
There are many stories surrounding the vagrants of the city. The stories are usually vague and the evidence shaky.
Anna is one of them. The big news on Church Square two days ago was that she had tried to commit suicide by drinking a handful of sleeping pills. Now she was sitting in front of the women’s rest room on a bench trying to hide her embarrassment behind a smile.
There is one man called Boela (which is a name often given to the South African bulldog, a very fierce type). When he is drunk – which is his normal condition – he walks out onto the road and tries to physically fight one of the buses. It is said that he is very rich and carries money around in his socks. This is told as the truth by Aunt Rachel. She goes to the bank once a month to pay off a car loan and she saw him one day shaking out the notes from his socks - to the disgust of the bank clerks.
In the winter they moved away, like swallows, to warmer areas – Durban by all accounts. Boela and Vaalbaadjie (Grey-Jacket), Paragorie (after the Lennons medicines bottles she frequently drank), the 14 year old Martha, with her 30 year old boyfriend, Leen who these days had a boyfriend who looks like someone coming straight from the 2nd World War; the aggressive pair Andries and Stella.
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