An island in a river

"I went back home, I thought things would be better, but it was more tough then," he looks left to the fibrecrete wall a few metres away, flicks his hands out in a shooing gesture, looks back at me, "so I came back here to South Africa." He used to be a farmer in Zambia. He learnt English because he was a boy scout; his step-father never let him go to school. His friend told him about South Africa, and the two of them plus a cousin made the long trek south.

We're standing looking over the community garden of which he is pioneer and custodian. Inside, is another man about 20 years old. He's from Zim. He doesn't say why he left, only that he did. Things were always going to be better here. He smiles.

Living in a wendy-house, living in a shipping container. On a floor, on a mattras, maybe on a couch. Better here.

"I'm 20 years old and I haven't been on a good path in a while," says a guy with an Afrikaans accent. He's wearing a black beanie, he speaks softly, so softly I can hardly hear him. He's local, from around here. But transient. He's come, gone, come, gone, but now he's back. Crossing the borders of the city like his peers crossed the borders of a country.

"Give me your tired, your poor" said Lady Liberty, "your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Some community organizations, like this one in Salt River, remind me a little of Ellis Island. "We're like a train station," the director explains to me, "you come to the platform, you get on the train, and then you get off at your destination. You don't stay here and stagnate, you move on." They don't specialize, like so many organizations do, in one group of labels. Here, they do them all. The homeless, the destitute, the poor, the exiled. "We aren't the only NGO in the area," the director waves her hands over her shoulder, "but we never turn anyone away." It means that their programmes are diverse, disparate, a baggie of puzzle pieces that don't all build the same puzzle.

But baggie's of mismatched puzzle pieces is what built the most powerful state in the world. So maybe it's ok for Salt River too.

As I walk back to the Main Road to catch a taxi back to the office, the wind blows empty milk bottles and chip packets over the road. The two women walking in front of me are too deep in conversation to notice.