What do you do when you feel insignificant and trapped by circumstances you did not choose to be in? When you live in a country where you have been granted democratic ‘freedom’ but you have never experienced it? When people around you are getting economically emancipated but you never even get the crumbs from that table? What goes through you mind when everyday you wake up in hunger – physical, psychological and spiritual?

I live in Soweto. In a place called Molapo. I love Molapo. It is not a violent place. It is actually filled with amazing people. I am not planning to move away anytime soon. Molapo, however, is known for being a home for some of the ‘best’ trainsurfers in Soweto. Man, you should see the amazing stunts they perform on moving trains! (video attached).

The trainsurfing thing is not just about the drugs you know. It is a search for love and the yearning to belong to some kind of organised group. Dangerous as it is, it requires discipline and commitment – something that encourages them to stretch into extraordinary beings. At least in this world, they are not insignificant anymore. Their need for recognition and power is fed and they gain a sense of self-worth and status. They just want to get something out of their not so long-term existence. They are tired of the illusion of life. They rebel. They show life and death (which kinda feel the same) the middle finger and blow whistles to the rush of the surf.

There has been a couple of trainsurfers’ funerals in my hood. They do not mourn you know, they celebrate. They come in numbers too. They surf the bus all the way to the graveyard. The families grieve, crying for their sons’ blood evaporated by the sun off the railway lines – the minced flesh, the traumatising sight. Surfers dance, sing and chant to their heroes as they fantasize about their own deaths.

Soweto… is not all gloom and doom as some people believe. I repeat - I love that place! There is life there. You will never get a similar vibe anywhere else that you get from Soweto. The culture, the people, the buzz, the lingo, the fashion, the conversations, the loud music…

They did not choose to be born. They did not choose their parents. They did not choose their circumstances, their country, and their skin colour. They feel stuck. They feel like that, from the day they were born, they were never given a chance (or a choice). They need to feel they are in control of something…anything!

What do I do or say to make them stop? They are so amazing. All of that energy and faith in doing something that scary is unbelievable. How do I tell them that they can channel that energy somewhere else? Where would they start? Everything else that is considered decent by society demands them to have some sort of economic resource. Everything else that is decent is run by someone who looks down on them, demanding obedience and expecting them to beg. How do I tell them that, it is possible to make it irrespective of the circumstances they were born into? How do I stop them? What deal can I make with them? What do I have to offer that will make them feel like, for a moment, they are alive?

Soweto Train Surfing