I’ve heard the most terrible heartwrenching stories in the last week, and I haven’t had a chance to blog about them yet.  This morning’s story was a little closer to home though, and it made me realise how many people rely on me, or rather us, to bring in a income to our household.

If you live in South Africa, take a moment to think about how many people your salary supports.  I don’t think this exercise can be done as easily in non-African countries as you don’t have people working in your house generally.

Right, here’s our list…

• Me, Lance and our 2 kids… that is what you normally think about and that’s normal.

But in our case, as with most South Africans, that’s not actually true.  Our list also includes:

• Lance’s mom – we pay rent for her and give her spending money because she’s on a govt pension
• The gardener – he lives alone but I’m not sure how many people his salary supports
• Our domestic worker, Beauty and her extended family – and this is where the list grows long.  Beauty and I often have chats in the morning before I leave for work so I know a lot about her family and home life.  On her salary she is supporting her husband (he lost his job in 2008), a 20 year old son who finished matric last year and hasn’t been able to find work (until now… he’s actually just got a contract job until Feb), and a 16year old son at school.  And then on top of this her eldest son has made his 18 year old girlfriend pregnant and her story is below.

So in total, our income supports 11 people that we know about.  Quite scary, isn’t it?!

Anyway, that’s my preamble… a long one I know… but here’s the important story and the one that threw me this morning.

Beauty’s son met this girl while they were at school together, and she’s now pregnant.  That’s actually the easy bit to the story.  Beauty was highly upset about what he’d done, but there’s very little she can do about it, except give support and help.  A (have no idea what her name is) is in matric this year and the baby is due in February.

She updated me on the saga this morning.  Apparently A’s mom kicked her out of the house 3 months ago because A refused to have an abortion, and A has been living in a shelter in Hillbrow since then (Beauty doesn’t have the space in her house)! Imagine kicking your daughter out of home, knowing that she’s in matric!

Beauty has been feeding her on my leftovers since then, and has been clothing her with all my old clothes that I give Beauty to sell for extra money.  Sometimes Beauty doesn’t go home with leftovers because we’re not exactly rolling in dough atm and I’m trying to be careful with overspending. And on those days, A doesn’t eat or only eats the one meal of soup and mielie rice she  gets from the shelter.  She was living in her school uniform until I chucked out some clothes (not knowing that this was happening).  And she only got a pillow when I replaced my pillows a few weeks ago.

A, however, has actually studied during this time, and amazingly finished ALL her exams! Isn’t that incredible? Not sure whether I’d have been able to do that.

How can you, as a mother, abandon your child like that? It’s beyond me.  It doesn’t matter to me how cross she may have made you, but to know that your child is not getting food to feed your grandchild and is living in a dangerous shelter and do NOTHING about it, is completely beyond my comprehension.