Building a Shack
We came to Crossroads to build a shack. We had to cut down the trees with a panga, to make room to build a shack. We did not know how to do it, but Nomhle and I learnt from some boys there. They had made their own shacks out of sticks and a big brown piece of railway canvas. We found a piece like that on the dump.
Some people didn't like this canvas because it was broken, but we used it. If we found a small piece, we took some wire and sewed it onto the bigger piece. When the wind came, the canvas would blow away. It makes me laugh, to remember. We could not buy a bed, so we found a wooden door on the dump and put it on tins to keep it off the ground, and then put some blankets on top.
There was no mattress. We just took the blankets from the dump, washed them and put them over ourselves, the adults and kids. We called these beds our 'plank beds'. We had four of them in our shack, with an adult and child in each bed. We found a lot of blankets on the dump so we were not cold, even in winter.
To make a stove for cooking, we found a big tin can on the dump and punched holes in it with a screwdriver. I saw my friends using a stove like that and asked them how they made it, and they showed me. If someone stole the can during the day, when we were away, we could just go to the dump to find another tin can.
By Jo-Anne Smetherham