| On Monday, one of the Stellenbosch street kids got upset by a girl and got himself high (on Mandrax, I think), and got run over while crossing a busy street. He was so blotto that he didn't realise his leg was broken and the bone was sticking out at some insane angle.
It was a big job trying to establish where he was. Although people at Stellenbosch hospital said he'd been transferred to Tygerberg, patient enquiries couldn't help me at first. After a day or so, I managed to trace him to one of the orthopaedic wards, so Carol's cousin and I drove all his friends over to see him.
They gave him a big lecture about behaving himself and not having himself led astray by girls. (By all accounts, this teenage girl and her sister are the crime-bosses of Stellenbosch; I have heard a lot of bad things about them during the past year. I have only met one of them. She's pretty, and she doesn't look like the kind of babe that would hang out with street kids. The kids apparently steal for them in exchange for sex. One of the boys committed suicide earlier this year because of them. I don't know why the police don't just set a trap for them.)
Despite the initial opinion of of medical people at the scene that he might have to have it amputated, doctors at Tygerberg Hospital did a good job of turning his leg into what my friend Carol described as an "external aerial" as you can see in the photo. They say he won't ever be able to take part in sport again, but he will be able to walk in about 6 weeks' time. |