Addiction: Garden of need

Deep in downtown Joburg is a place of desperate fellowship: a park that's home to addicts. Nickolaus Bauer and photographer Jono Wood went there

Saliva is caked on the corners of Damian's chapped lips. Breathing in rapid bursts, he grinds his jagged teeth. A snarl contorts his face as his eyes roll around.

"Don't f**ing patronise me!" he screams. "I know you laanies are carrying something on you!" He pulls his target towards him. Jono's arms shoot up in mock surrender.

Damian is close to breaking point. He must have it - now. He searches through the pockets of his new friends, and comes up empty handed. But it doesn't anger him much .

"Ja, neh, you okes don't have shit. But ya'll can hang with us, it's fine," he says, offering his own mock surrender.

It was our first day in The Park. The start of a journey through a forgotten corner of Joburg. At first, it didn't seem that hard to embed ourselves in this parallel universe, where life is cheap, external laws don't matter and addiction reigns.

Littering The Park's grounds on any given day you'll find more than 100 addicts. Snorting, smoking or shooting their way through their substance of choice. Drugs are their world, and The Park is their home.

"I started heroin on Christmas day in 1991," says Allan, one of The Park's longest-standing residents and unofficial spokesman.

Allan's greatest worry in life is overzealous police officers looking to make him their cheap thrill. "I told them they'd eat my shit. I meant it, too," he says with a wry smile.

One chilly afternoon, as they attempted to arrest him, the drug-fuelled skeleton pulled down his pants and defecated in his hands.

That wasn't all. The cops did not expect their blue uniforms to be soiled by Allan's runny shit. "They f**ed me up good and proper, but it was worth it," he says. "I never got taken in and I wiped the smirk off those c***s' faces."

Twenty-three years of drug abuse have reduced his 43-year-old body to a contraption of weak muscles and brittle bones, wrapped in crumpled skin. It's a wonder he's alive; he attributes his survival to being blessed.

The twins Gift & Given are industrious addicts. They've scorned the stereotypical life of crime to fuel their addictions. Every day they rise at dawn, shoot their morning fix and hit the streets - hustling for honest cash as if their lives depended on it. It's often the case.

They flog anything from stale scones to pirated CDs. They dip in and out of the park throughout the day, taking short breaks to shoot up before returning to business.

"It doesn't matter what we're selling," says Given. "As long as we get enough money for a gram or two a day. If we don't get it, we can't move." The pair only return to their Yeoville squat long after the sun has set. Their work ethic would serve them well in executive jobs. It's just misdirected.

Track marks run up and down their arms. Plastic crucifixes hang from their necks. A permanent daze haunts their gaunt faces. The only discernible difference between them is that Gift owns a crack pipe. That and his preference for shooting into his left arm; his brother uses his right. "This life is not nice," Gift says. "But what else must we do? We are hooked now. We must just carry on."

The pair are guarded about their past. Their Model C accents suggest a tale of misfortune, of bad decisions. Their family has given up on them. They can't go home.

Raymond, on the other hand, can see his family, but chooses not to. Unlike the parents of most denizens of The Park, his mother would take him back in a heartbeat. But he doesn't allow himself to go back. He's afraid of robbing her of the little she has.

Raymond is a bit of an anomaly. Surrounded by junkies who would happily snatch an old lady's handbag, he's placid and gentle.

"I'm friendly with everyone, as long as they don't try and f*** me over," he says.

He must eke out up to R200 a day to feed his heroin and nyaope habit. Raymond makes a plan. He never steals, he says. He's trustworthy.

In a chaotic place, there must be rules, and rules need an enforcer. Kapie is just that. He's respected by everyone in the park, though not physically fearsome.

"Majita! Don't gwala here! If ya'll don't show some f***ing discipline, I'll give y'all some discipline," screams Kapie. His comrades comply - not because they have to, but because they want to. He keeps them respectable.

"When you make an agreement, you best not break it," he tells us one wintry afternoon.

Kapie is hooked on crack and nyaope, but has retained his pride. He's confident that someone's desperate situation doesn't dictate their potential.

"You must never sell yourself down the river. Back yourself, my man!" he told us one afternoon, as a squall of rain hit the basketball court and sent pigeons scattering.

The Park is a filthy place. Spent needles compete for space with human excrement and flea-infested blankets.

But it's also a place for children. There are swings and roundabouts for toddlers to play on. Older kids play football and hop-scotch, dodging rubbish and drug-addled bodies. Residents of The Park don't bother them. Theirs is not to meddle with innocents and lead them astray.

Everyone has a choice, and theirs is to let kids be kids.

Bokkie isn't one of those playful kids. Nobody knows his real name. He could be 15, or 13. No one knows, and he's not telling.

His de facto family doesn't care. Not that his biological one did either. In The Park he's accepted. The loving caress the crack pipe offers him. The gentle reassurance the needle gives him.

Bokkie is relatively lucky. Baby isn't.

When you're homeless and hooked on drugs and alcohol, an unexpected pregnancy pits parental instincts against other desires. Father tries his best to care for baby. Food for baby? Or drugs for mom and dad?

In her drugged stupor, Mother often forgets baby on the pavement next to their bed.

Baby doesn't know where he is, as babies don't. He smiles, oblivious to the perils of his existence. Some Park residents suggest they give baby to an orphanage. Less to worry about and more chance he'll survive. Mom and Dad disagree. They love baby. Baby loves them.

Addiction does horrible things to people. When Damian's fiending for a fix he's a goblin - his soul is ripped from his body. His joints seize up. After scoring, he's witty, endearing. "You won't want to know me when I haven't had." He forgets we've seen it before.

The Park is often dismissed as nothing more than an open-air bedlam for Joburg's drug-addled dregs: the people you know exist, but don't ever want to see.

But it's a home. "We might have all these problems, but there's no judgment," says Damian.

"Life is what you can make it. We're just living it." LS