“Hier kom hulle!” the shout cuts the tension as we see the busses on Atlantic Road snaking their way around the bend. Release after days of rumours a flurry of activity unfolds.

Now whats the very first thing you do when trucks come to take you away to a Strandfontien Displacement Camp? You make sandwiches for everyone of course. Achmat gets out my camping table, the women all know what to do instinctively, almost a reaction to shock, they gather around the kitchen table to make peanut butter and jam sandwiches. They don’t gather their meagre possessions, they don’t think of self, they do what women know, they make sandwiches for the unknown journey ahead for everyone.

In the lowest of the low I have seen the best of the best and I am truly humbled.

I had the privilege of serving on the Covid 19 frontline during the first few month’s of South Africa hard lock down. The homeless were rounded up in the Final Solution nightmare and shipped off to Strandfontein Displacement Camp where they were interned for a few months at the CoCTs pleasure. While the ideas were great but not noble, in the seven years I have served with this community, this was the cleanest and soberest i have seen many of my friends. They left Strandfontein fatter and healthier yet on the very first day of release i found Eric passed out in front in the bottle store while a few others fell where they smoked their first lolly in months. I cried at the return to normal and the failure of the system to deal with the trauma that drove them to where they find themselves now.