Homeless drifter travels the Garden Route
I was driving down the street and noticed a somewhat familiar scene, someone on a bicycle with a small trailer coming down the road. At first I thought it must have been a Dutch tourist travelling through Africa.
At closer look you then realise it is someone who is out there due to necessity and not choice.
I have had contact with homeless individuals with wanderlust and they all end up on the streets, roads and fields of South Africa for different reasons.
The country has changed and they are not safe anymore, being robbed of the little they have. The freedom they have chosen due to circumstances beyond their control dawns at a price. So many times I have helped with the public to replace stolen items, it sometimes seems a lost cause.
The story of Gert Johannes Vermaak reads the same, he is on the roads travelling as an artist trying to earn a few cents, accommodation and food.
I found Gert in George where he was to meet the lawyer and police before he could set out on another adventure via Route 62 to Cape Town.
You see, he was run over by a car in 2010 and after being told that he would never walk again recovered miraculously after 3 months in hospital. That brought a lot of complications and involvement from 3rd parties that still need to be sorted out.
So him and I went for lunch and he could tell me a bit of his life at least what he could remember before the accident.
He was serving his country in the olden days in the navy and police force but things never worked out as he was later separated from wife and children.
So it happened that he became homeless and a drifter. He was not elaborating more about all the reasons and circumstance and was much busier with the present time. He told me that he was robbed from his tent, bag and bicycle a few times. He has blessed other homeless travelers with his last possessions and received replacements from strangers.
In Montagu his trailer was built by Frans White and sons Panel beaters and ever since he cannot live travel without it.
He told me about the hardships and sadness out there and that he was instrumental to assist a number of other homeless through the mercy of Yahweh. He even travels with a tow rope and an empty canister to assist stranded motorist and has used it a few times.
He likes to paint and works in any medium available from pencil to water colour and would be ecstatic if he could be commissioned for a landscape or nature scene by anyone.
Now he would love more than anything to be paid out by the road accident fund and then try to reunite with his lost family and children.
Born in 1965 in Newcastle and grew up in Stanger Natal he has chosen the Cape as his home and would appreciate any help or perhaps a place to stay in return for anything he is capable to do. To contact him you may call him on his cell at 083 719 5071 or send him an SMS, he hides his phone during the day and checks it in the evenings.