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Far cry from home
Tanya Farber, The Sunday Independent (SA)
January 15, 2006

http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3065081&fSectionId=1041

For many Zimbabwean economic refugees Jozi can be a mixed bag of opportunity and hostility

Miriam Moyo*, like many hopefuls from Zimbabwe, came to Jozi in the hope of earning a living so that she could support her family.

Her working life here has been a mixed bag of cooking Ethiopian food, taking care of an ageing grandmother, nurturing newborn twins, and washing and cooking for an elderly couple in Houghton.

She tries to makes ends meet but, she says, "I don't like South Africa", and she counts the months, weeks and days until she can visit her family back home.

Miriam was born in the main hospital in Bulawayo in 1974, but after her birth, she and her mother returned to the rural area where her mother was living.

She was an only child and they remained there until she reached school-going age. Then they moved to Bulawayo where her mother sold vegetables.

They stayed in a single rented room and Miriam was enrolled at St Bernard's Primary School, a private Roman Catholic school, where her mother believed she would receive a high standard of education. All her subjects, apart from Ndebele, were taught in English.

"I never met my father," she says, "and in my culture it would not be right for me to ask my mother too many questions about him. "She is also the kind of person who would not want me to."

After primary school, Miriam attended the Amhlophe Secondary School where she completed her O-levels.

In 1997, she fell pregnant and moved in with the father of her baby. Two years later, she had a second child, but by then her hopes for a stable and loving relationship had disappeared.

"In the beginning he was okay, but sometimes you never know a person until you stay with them," she says.

With no financial support and no prospect of work in Zimbabwe's depressed economy, Miriam decided to join her cousin, who had a job in Johannesburg.

"My cousin paid for me to come here at the end of 2002," she says, "but then she passed away the following year. I now support two of her three children - the two who are still under 18."

Jozi was a very different world from the one she had imagined. "I had heard so much about this city," she says. "Everyone spoke about Johannesburg, eGoli, and said that everything here was so beautiful, the buildings and everything.

"I also thought everybody would have formal jobs. I didn't expect to find people selling vegetables in the streets.

"Also, my cousin had a really good job in an expensive restaurant and I expected to find similar work. But I found most Zimbabweans were working as domestic workers, gardeners or security guards."

Miriam stayed in her cousin's flat in the inner city, which wasn't too crowded because her cousin's job was relatively lucrative.

"Apart from us, there was only one person staying in the living room," she recalls.

She couldn't find a similar job and had to make do with cooking and selling food for Ethiopians in a rented room in Jeppe Street.

After four months, however, she landed a weekend job looking after an old woman in Sandringham Gardens.

"My uncle's girlfriend called me to relieve her from her job looking after an old granny on the weekends, and that's when I left the Ethiopians."

To supplement the income from this weekend job, she would also wash clothes twice a week for customers whom she had met at the makeshift restaurant.

"Before the job in Sandringham, I didn't think Jo'burg was so nice," she says, "because I had only ever been to town where I worked and lived. But, then I saw the parts of Jo'burg that made people say it was beautiful."

"Granny", as Miriam fondly calls her, "was a very nice woman, and could walk on her own and didn't need help in that way. I had to clean the bathroom and toilet, make the bed and three meals, and also help if she had friends over.

"She had an apartment, and I used to sleep there on the weekends." Once Miriam had entered the domestic world of the middle class, every other job came by word of mouth.

"Granny's granddaughter got me a job looking after newborn twins. At first, it was only on Mondays, but then it was Thursdays too." It is now three years since Miriam came to Jozi in search of work, and she is currently employed as a domestic worker in upmarket Houghton.

"I still live in town," she says, "but the flat I now stay in has got a lot more people in it. Sometimes, I just want to be by myself."

She wakes up at 6.30am and leaves at 7am on foot to Hillbrow. "In town, you have to queue for too long to get a taxi, so I would rather walk across to Hillbrow where it's much easier."

She says the worst aspect of sharing a flat with many people is that they all need to use the bathroom before work.

Of the use of the kitchen during the supper rush, she says: "It's okay, because we are lucky enough to have a four-plate stove."

Miriam recalls that, before she came to Jozi she had heard of Zimbabweans living in flats.

"I expected two or three people in a flat," she says, "because at home we won't have everybody staying together like that.

"Then I got to Jo'burg and I saw so many people sharing. There will be many beds in a living room, and you will find husbands and wives having to share a room with other families."

But, like most other economic refugees, Miriam has to overlook the problems of being in a city that doesn't always treat her kindly.

"There are just no jobs in Zim," she says. "If a company is there, it has been there since I grew up and it won't expand at all.

"The only jobs there are nursing and teaching, but you have to pass your O-levels and you have to have maths and English if you want to go to college.

"Here, companies are always expanding, and as a domestic worker you can earn more than a teacher back home."

But, she says, you have to make many sacrifices to be here.

"I don't like town because I didn't grow up in such an area. For me the best time of the year is in April or December when I get to go home."

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