A Street Vendor and his LOCKDOWN Dilemma Part 1

Simon was a 23-year-old man, who carried big rich dreams in his heart, though he was currently drowning in poverty. If anyone asked him what he did for a living, he always proudly answered: "I am a street vendor". This term meant that Simon sold rat poison, cellphone airtime and cigarettes on the street pavements of the Central Business District, commonly referred to as the CBD.

For him to get to his place of work, every day Simon would walk 7 kilometres from his home to the CBD, and then another 7km from the CBD to his home. To manage the wear and tear of his shoes due to the long daily walks, Simon wore a pair of sandals whose sole was made from the rubber of a haulage truck tyre which never wore out.

When he was 13 years old,  Simon was forced to drop out of school after both, his parents passed away in quick succession, and his grandmother with whom he stayed with then in the rural areas was unable to pay his school fees. For four years he diligently worked as a cattle herder, with the hope that one day he would return to school, but sadly this never happened. When he turned 17 years old, he joined the great trek to the City, in the hope of striking gold and a better life.

After six years in the City, he had not struck any gold but only struck poverty, pain, sickness and lack. Due to the nature of his occupation, Simon survived from hand to mouth. Whatever sales he made daily went to ensuring that he was able to buy something to eat that night. During the daytime, hunger was his best friend and companion and he knew nothing called breakfast or lunch. Despite this, each day that he woke up, he held a never-ending hope that his life would get better. After all, hope was the only thing that he proudly owned. The place he called home, was a small room he shared with 5 other young men who had also emigrated from the rural areas. His only physical possessions were a few secondhand clothes, a dirty and tattered blanket that covered him as he slept on the cold floor every night and a few worn-out pots he had found at a rubbish dump.

Each day he and fellow vendors would play cat and mouse games with the municipal police who would try and arrest them for illegal vending. Now, as he walked home after another day of much toil and little reward, he faced a new danger he had never encountered, a danger greater than that of being arrested. The Government had just announced that due to a disease called COVID-19 or coronavirus as they called it, they were going to lock down the country to try and stop the spread of the disease by restricting the movements of everyone,  and people were going to be made to stay at home for 21 days.

Simon was terrified by the prospects of not being able to go the CBD and sell, and that there would be no customers to sell to, because of the lockdown. His daily meal and sustenance relied on the proceeds of the time he spent trying to sell his products. The little rent he paid, to his greedy landlord who kept on adding more tenants to the small room depended on him being able to vend.

Simon did not understand why the poor like him were being punished for a disease that was brought to the country by the rich who travelled out of the country. He had heard about social distancing that was being talked about, but that meant nothing to him as to where he lived, there were five grown men cramped up in a small room, sleeping head to toe. Also, every day he would have to line up in a long and crowded queue at the local borehole to get water that he would use to bath and drink that day as running tap water was a rare occurrence where he stayed.

Some of his roommates had talked of going back to the rural areas for the 21 days. The chances of surviving there were better than sitting and doing nothing in the urban areas they reasoned. For Simon though, that was not a viable option because he had no money for bus fare to go and come back and he also could not go to his rural home empty-handed.

"If this sickness does not kill me then hunger will over the next 21 days", he thought, as he walked home at the end of another long day, and his empty and hungry stomach grumbled in agreement with that thought.

To be continued…

© TeddyTC “The Marketplace Story Weaver”

TeddyTC can be contacted on marketplacefables@gmail.com  or marketplacefables.blogspot.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.