IT’S A WOW: THE HALFWAY HOUSE WHERE WOMEN RISE

‘This place is a wow! It’s not just a roof over your head,’ says a formerly homeless resident currently graduating from this halfway house with a job and fresh understanding of how to cope with life’s stresses | Photo: Ronelle de Villiers 

Michell May (51) grew up in Cape Town’s Mitchells Plain, the daughter of a factory worker mom and plumber dad, and attended Glendale High School. She became a mom at 14 and worked as a supermarket cashier before becoming addicted and ending up homeless for 20 years. Today she’s been sober for five years, works as a carer to the elderly and is about to graduate from Rea Thusana after being supported there for 11 months

I WAS 12 when I lost my mother from a heart attack, and my dad died not long after. He was an alcoholic who didn’t live with my mom but I was quite close to him. A family member looked after me and my siblings but unfortunately we didn’t really talk about how to avoid boys, and I fell pregnant with my son at 14. The dad was out of the picture but his family offered to look after my baby. This felt fine at the time, but later I felt very sad that I’d missed out on my son’s life. I saw him from time to time but then the family moved to Johannesburg.  After they came back, he was shot in the back by gangsters and later died. I find his birthday very hard every year.

I moved out of home when I was 18 because a family member’s husband sexually abused me. My friend told me I could get a job at some agency and I went for an interview in Muizenberg. It turned out to be an escort agency. I thought, well, there’s nowhere else I know of where I can get an income, so I became an escort there.

Every night I’d to walk to the beach and pray because the family looking after my son had encouraged me to give my heart to Jesus. ‘God, this can’t be my life,’ I prayed. ‘I need something else.’ I always felt He had a plan for me. Things started to change and I got a job at Woolworths and worked as a cashier for nine years.

‘I was trying to numb everything’

Unfortunately, during that time, I got into contact with relatives on my dad’s side and they introduced me to substances like ecstasy and mandrax. And so my substance abuse started. I wasn’t only doing it for fun, I think I was trying to numb everything. It was just weekends to start with, but then it went one way.

It doesn’t feel good to be addicted, you constantly have to get a fix and find the money for it. I used to sell my body at night and during the day I’d buy things and resell them or steal things to pay for my fixes. 

I became pregnant during this time with my daughter Chloe. I raised her till she was three but, as I got deeper into drugs, I took her to live with my aunt as I didn’t want to lose her to welfare. I knew she would be safe with my family but I was really sad to leave her. 

Eventually I ended up living on the streets of Wynberg. For 20 years, people from Christ Church in Kenilworth never stopped reaching out to us ladies on the road, especially a lady called Diana. She would visit us, encourage us and tell us that God loved us. 

One night I was standing on a street corner and I told God I wasn’t going to smoke anymore, I just needed food. Amazingly, just then, two people from Christ Church drove by and offered me a meal. I asked them to tell Diana I was ready to leave the streets and she came to fetch me. She took me to a shelter, then I went to a rehab centre and, when I was clean, I came to Rea Thusana.

Now a carer to the elderly after living on the streets for 20 years, Michell prepares a meal for fellow Rea Thusana residents. ‘This is a family house where people can belong, where women who may never have experienced love before can find it. In this house I have learnt patience, love and care. I don’t know of anywhere else like it,’ she says

It’s a really, really good house because the people here are involved in your life. I had been a very aggressive person, I would backchat and want to do things my way, but here I have learnt patience, love and care. One of the ladies in the home had a situation and I had to handle it because our house parents weren’t there. I phoned our house father and he said, ‘Keep the ladies calm, I have faith in you’. It was very hard but I managed it. It’s not easy and I’m still learning, but I’ve learnt to cope with stresses.

My daughter Chloe was very cross about being left with my aunt and it wasn’t easy to reconnect with her, but over the years she’s forgiven me. She visits me at Rea Thusana whenever she wants. It’s a very nice place for her to come to, and her son can crawl all over the place!

Now I’m moving on to live independently in a house. Rea Thusana needs a little funding assistance and I do hope it can keep going because it’s a family house where people can belong, where women who may have never experienced love before can find it. I don’t know of anywhere else like it.’

‘If you come from the streets, there’s one thing that you lack more than anything, and that’s belonging,’ says Jou-anne Gouws

Jou-anne Gouws (39) grew up in Durban, adopted by a station manager and full-time mom, and attended Durban Academy until her parents moved to the Free State. She started experimenting with substances at 16 and worked as a cashier until addiction led her onto the streets. Sober for the past two years, she’s been living at Rea Thusana for nine months, and is employed as a peer worker supporting homeless people at U-Turn Homeless Ministries in Claremont

 I MET MY EX HUSBAND Johannes [not his real name] when I was 14. My dad had just died and this new guy took away the pain of losing him. He was funny and very good looking, and I thought he was my forever person. I was willing to do anything just to be with him. 

My mom was very strict and didn’t like Johannes because he smoked weed. In fact, she asked me to leave home because of it. So I moved with him to his grandma in Oudsthoorn. There, in a park, he introduced me to mandrax and weed and, later on, to crystal meth. I didn’t know much about drugs, but I thought maybe they’d be fun. Everyone we hung out with was doing them and I worried that if I didn’t, Johannes wouldn’t love me any more.

We married and had two boys but, because of our addiction, we ended up on the streets. On and off, we lost the children to the care of social services. It absolutely broke me not to be with them but I couldn’t give them a home. 

‘being addicted is hell’

Being addicted is hell. You feel good when you use but when you come down from a high it’s terrible. You don’t want to think about the trauma of your situation, the reality of not being with your kids, that you had to pack their things and say goodbye to them, so you use again. 

At times I felt, for what am I living? I have a rock for a pillow, I wash in public toilets, I steal toilet paper from churches, and I feel self-conscious and ashamed. And so lonely. Social services organised for me to go to rehab at the age of 24. Johannes followed in but I relapsed after he started drinking again. Eventually, after 17 years together, we broke up. Today he still struggles with alcohol.

In rehab, I had a very intense experience of God after reading my Bible. He really came alive to me, no longer just a man in a picture. But later, I ignored and blamed Him, angry because I was lonely, even though I knew the situation was my fault. It just hurt so much not to have my children or belong anywhere. 

But one night, sleeping in an empty container, I started to feel suicidal, that I simply couldn’t do this anymore. I began to cry and, as I did so, I prayed and told God that if there was any hope or purpose for me whatsoever, He must give me a sign.

Jou-anne, who here prepares for dinner at Rea Thusana, now works outside the house, helping another NPO support unhoused people

The very next day, someone who shared my container came to me and said that a lady called Elisabe sent her greetings. I couldn’t think who he meant, but then clicked that she was the social worker who’d sent me to rehab 11 years earlier. This was my sign for sure! That same morning I went to her and, after going to rehab in Parow, I came to Rea Thusana House. 

This place is a wow. If you come from the streets, there’s one thing you lack more than anything and that’s a sense of belonging. This home gives you a very special sense of that. It’s not just a roof over your head. At Rea Thusana, we’re sisters who build each other up even when it’s difficult. Here I’ve learnt to bond with people, to open up again, to find out what we have in common, and to push through when things are difficult. I’ve learnt to ‘name and tame’ my emotions, and that how you say something is just as important as what you say. That if you have a hard, closed-off attitude, you’ll get a hard one back. That you need to be mindful and put yourself in other people’s shoes as we all have such different stories. 

When I was in addiction my sons didn’t want anything to do with me, but now we’re rebuilding our relationship and I can speak to them. I’m so grateful for their forgiveness and our relationship.

‘At Rea Thusana, we’re sisters who build each other up even when it’s difficult,’ says Jou-anne

Christ comes and picks you out of your circumstances and brings you to places you thought were never imaginable. I ran away from him but I’m not running any more. Now when I’m stressed, instead of abusing substances, I go to God. I sit on the bench in the garden here at the house and speak to Him. He has always been there for me and it’s incredible to remember what He has done for me. When my spirit was broken and I started praying, He was near, just like the Bible says. 

I’m so grateful to have lived here. It’s heart-breaking to think that this house might close down. So many ladies need to find a place where they can recover through belonging. A place like this has a significant impact on a woman’s ability to heal.”

Helping one woman get back on her feet can heal an entire hurting family, says Rea Thusana CEO and house father, Phinius Sebatsane. ‘NPOs like ours are really struggling in the current geo-political climate. I appeal to anyone reading this to stand with us’ 

The son of a domestic worker, Phinius (38) felt called during Covid lockdown to organise shelter for homeless women in a Cape Town church. This was the start of Rea Thusana, a home where unhoused women can find a community that cheers them on to transformed lives. Phinius is currently pursuing a Master’s in peace and justice through St. Stephen’s University in Canada, and lives in Wynberg with his wife Victoria Sibiya, a TV presenter and missionary

AS A YOUNG MAN, I had to throw out my alcoholic stepfather who hurt my mother, and it was then that I felt my responsibility as a man was to protect the most vulnerable. Most of the women who live on the street have been abused and, when I see them, I see my mother. 

Gender-based violence has been declared a national disaster so I really want to keep Rea Thusana open and establish more halfway homes like it, where women can find community and rehab to the point where they’re no longer victims, provide for themselves, move out to safe housing and grow further. In two years we’ve transitioned 14 women from homelessness into work, community and other housing. Three ladies went back to the street, just not ready to change.

Here, ladies can experience the friendship, acceptance and belonging that some have never experienced in their entire lives. The greatest joy is seeing them reconcile with their children and with God, which can have a ripple effect and heal a whole hurting family. So in fact, when you help one woman, you’re actually creating healing down the generations.

At Rea Thusana, women find friendship and acceptance that they may never have experienced before, says Phinius 

NPOs like ours are really struggling in the current geo-political climate but, if the house closes, it will be very difficult for the ladies to rebuild their lives. They might have to return to situations that pulled them down before, or even go back to the streets as housing costs are going bananas in Cape Town.

I appeal to anyone reading this to stand with us. Residents contribute to their own living costs but we additionally need about R45 000 monthly to keep the house going. All staff are volunteers, including myself and our supervisors, counsellors and psychologists. Anyone who wants to get involved as a volunteer can reach out through email or our website, or support us with a once-off donation, or ideally a monthly one. Thank you very much.”♦

Homelessness in Cape Town: the stark reality

Rea Thusana, the beginning: a welcome pack for homeless women who Phinius helped to shelter in a church during lockdown

By helping families reunite and heal, Rea Thusana is having a generational impact, says Phinius

Michell in her Sunday best. ‘I always felt God had a plan for me,’ she says

‘It’s a really, really good house because the people here are involved in your life,’ says Michell | Photo: Ronelle de Villiers