A 14-year-old boy named Wonder clambers out of the ocean and onto Durban’s South Beach, exhausted after hours of surfing, and collapses on the sand.
At the end of the day, he’ll return his surfboard to a nearby community center and then curl up on a downtown sidewalk to sleep.
Wonder is among a dozen young black boys taking to the waves every day through a community group called Umthombo, which is coaching street kids in surfing and other sports to keep them off the street while providing counseling to find more lasting solutions to their problems.
PHOTO: AFP
“When I’m surfing, I don’t sniff glue. I want to leave it behind,” Wonder said.
His parents have both died, and he ran away from his uncle’s home, where Wonder says he was beaten and often denied meals.
He says he’d rather live on the streets than return to his uncle. In his tattered wetsuit, he’s found a new identity. After a year of practice, he won second place in a local competition, scooping a trophy, a T-shirt and “a big bag of chips.”
Emma Sibilo, one of the social workers at Umthombo, said Wonder’s story is typical of the estimated 400 street kids in Durban. Most have turned to the streets after their parents died, or to escape abuse at home.
But life on the streets exposes them to drugs and often forces them into gangs that wage violent turf wars in the city, she said.
“Surfing takes them away from drugs. They go there, they become active, they get fit, meaning they engage in less anti-social behavior,” Sibilo said.
One of the smallest surfers is nine-year-old Khetho, who has spent most of his life on the streets. He sleeps with his three brothers on the sidewalk, has bounced in and out of temporary homes, but was mainly spending his time begging for money and sniffing glue.
Since he started surfing two years ago, he eats two meals a day at Umthombo and spends most of his days in the water.
“He used to sniff glue all the time, but now he barely uses it because he can’t surf properly when he sniffs,” said Tom Hewitt, who founded Umthombo in 1998.
“When he’s wearing a wetsuit, he’s not considered a street kid. People tell him how good he’s doing. He’s gone from being a nobody to being a somebody, in his mind,” Hewitt said.
Backed by private South African and British donors, Hewitt is expanding Umthombo’s center and hopes to eventually provide shelter where kids can sleep at night.
In the run-up to the World Cup, Durban is transforming its oceanfront into a modern new boardwalk that will link the stadium and its dramatic 106m arch to 5km of beaches, hotels and restaurants.
As part of the urban clean-up, street kids like Khetho say they’re being regularly rounded up and taken 40km outside the city to a spartan facility meant for adults, where they’re left with little supervision.
“There is a shelter, but it’s for cripple people and mad people. You can’t stay with mad people,” Khetho said, adding that he walked back to the beach after being taken there.
“We don’t stay where we don’t know. We stay where we know,” he said.
The city denies that it has a policy of rounding up street kids, but metro police say they have to take action when residents complain.
“We intervene only when there is a complaint and a crime,” police spokeswoman Joyce Khuzwayo said. “They sleep outside, in front of people’s house. At night, they become a problem. When there is an event, they go and watch. Sometimes, they steal money, bags at the beachfront. People complain.”
Still, Wonder says he’s been rounded up 15 times, and every time he’s come back. However, his treatment hasn’t put him off his dream, to one day become a policeman himself.
“They are not doing because they like to do it. They do it because their bosses make them,” he said.
For now, he sees surfing as his way off the streets, if he can win more competitions and attract companies to sponsor him.
“If you get a sponsor, you get money, you get clothes,” he said. “Everything, you can get.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number