"With no place to go, no place to go, to dry her eyes. Broken inside." - Avril Lavigne

The door bell rang around noon yesterday.

I went over, looked through the eye hole, unlatched the chain and the lock and opened it.

"Hi Thulani," I said. "What's up?"

Thulani is the boy who had been living with us for the past two-and-a-half months or so. He's the boy who had been beaten and was afraid to return to the township for fear that he might be killed.

"Nothing," he said. "Where's Mama?"

"She's not here right now," I replied. Before I could even offer that he come in, he was already in the door, and walking toward the lounge.

He sat down in the red-upholstered chair in the corner of the room and began talking.

"I think I'm going to go back to P.E. (Port Elizabeth)," he said.

"Why," I said, sad, but not all that surprised at what he had just said.

"If Mama can't get me a place to stay, I'm going to go back to Port Elizabeth," he repeated.

It was classic Thulani. He was threatening to do something, hoping that this threat would make us spring to action and be sympathetic to his cause. He didn't need to threaten me. I'm already very sympathetic.

His excuses for wanting to leave ranged from peoples' negative comments toward him when he has an Amasango uniform on, to wanting to see his mother, to having been in grade nine in Port Elizabeth schools only to be pushed back to grade five in Grahamstown.

He gave all these reasons for wanting to leave, but the underlying problelm is that this boy is homeless. He's got nobody to look out for him. He's got no place to stay. He'd been living with friends in the township over the holiday, but family is returning, and the shack he's shared with these people is getting too crowded. He's got to move on.

Though he's threatening to go back to Port Elizabeth, I really don't believe he wants to go. I think he might, if something's not done, return to the place he fled from more than a year ago, but I think he realizes that city doesn't hold the solution to his problems. After all, he wouldn't have run away to Grahamstown if everything was going so well for him in Port Elizabeth.

Thulani had been living with us for nearly three months. When he began staying with us, social services had guaranteed him a spot out of Grahamstown in three days time. Three months down the line, and there's still no light at the end of the tunnel.

I hope Jane does allow Thulani to come back and stay with us. Yes, we fought when he was living in the house. Yes, it was stressful. But Thulani was told by social services he'd be gone in three days, and told by Jane that he'd have a place to stay until social services re-located him out of Grahamstown. Social services hasn't come through, and it isn't Thulani's fault.

Thulani is a guy who really has tried so hard to make it. When he began with us three months ago, he was a hardened street kid. He still is--but he's made enormous strides.

In his first days with us, Thulani had been going into withdrawal from mandrax. His left leg would spasm so violently he'd either fall, or, have to make his way to the couch until the shaking subsided. His whole body would shake for a couple minutes, he'd try and hold his leg down and would moan. The pain looked excrutiating. It would stop, but then it would start back up again in an hour, in three hours, or the next day. He got off the drugs. The withdrawal symptoms weren't pretty, but he did it. He kept up his end of the bargain.

When he first arrived, he'd just go the fridge, and without asking, help himself to whatever was in there. He'd take half a loaf of bread that was to be shared by four people, or drink half a bottle of juice, and when he was confronted about it, he'd stomp out of the kitchen and refuse to speak. After some time of living at 31 Bedford Street, Thulani would ask to have a couple slices of bread--and would accept it if he could only have three slices and not six.

Thulani kept up his end of the bargain. He's stayed in school. He has gotten off the drugs. He's gotten much more polite. He's kept his word. Social services hasn't.

I hope when Jane returns Thulani again has a place to stay.

He's tried. The system has failed him.