Many women come from up country to do sleep-in work, hoping to be able to provide a better life for their families and children they leave behind. They think that coming to the city would give them a chance at a better future, and in some cases they succeed. For those that don’t succeed, they find themselves jobless, homeless and lonely. Feeling that they have failed their families and their children, they end up in relationships hoping that their partner would provide for them. Those that cannot find other employment normally end up on the street, living in shacks, meeting the wrong partners and end up in abusive relationships, that eventually leads them to becoming infected with HIV/Aids. Because of the stigma attached to this disease, many find it nearly impossible to find work, hence either ending up in squatter camps, living in the bush or in the graveyard.

Other families end up living in these squalid conditions because of the high level of unemployment, or retrenchments, which causes them to lose their homes, as they cannot afford to pay the bonds or rent. For many of these parents, not being able to look after their children adequately causes a great amount of stress that is appeased by liquor. Before they know it they turn to alcohol as “salvation”, because it dulls their reality and being in a drunken stupor they cannot hear the cries of their hungry children and see their pathetic living conditions.

During 2005 and 2006 the Aids Resource Centre served to channel food and clothing to those in the Graveyard of Maitland and the Bush in Mitchells Plain, as well as invited them to the Christmas parties and prayed for them in the hope of shining a light into their deprived and dull world.