The Outies

This journey started last year when I met Shane Viljoen at Salem Crossroads. Our third year project was to do a story on fatherhood and my colleague and I thought that Shane’s story and his life would be an interesting one to tell. I can still clearly remember him walking out of the farm house when we met. He was wearing a worn-out vest with tattoos peeping out and cigarette dangled from his mouth. At first I was very apprehensive, wondering what on earth we were doing at a place like this. Towering above me, Shane flashed me a smile and shook my hand. It was the beginning of a friendship.

Salem Crossroads is situated about 15 kilometres outside of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape Province. From the highway it looks like just a farm stall and a small nursery, but for those who care to learn a bit more, it is actually a Christian-based safe house for destitute men, and offers housing and rehabilitation for those addicted to drugs and alcohol. The farm is owned by Noel Banfield and has been operating for 32 years. Banfield is a devoted Christian and used to run his own engineering company. He believes he was called by God to help these men and so sold his company to his son and donated his farm as a safe house.

Although he does not live on the farm with the men, Banfield manages the farm and provides the men with counselling and devotion services every morning. Banfield says he strongly believes in what he is doing and that his Christian-based method works. Unlike other rehabilitation centres, Salem Crossroads is self-sufficient and the relationship between Banfield and the men is based solely on trust. When someone arrives on the farm, Banfield takes him under his wing and learns as much as he can about them.

The men are provided for, free of charge, on condition that they rid their addiction and partake in the general upkeep of the farm, which includes running the nursery. Each individual has a different responsibility on the farm, be it running the kitchen and cooking, working in the nursery, managing the farm stall or butchery or planting vegetables on the land. The men are not contracted to stay on the farm. Some like Shane have been in and out of Salem Crossroads for 20 years and some may only stay two days.

I was moved last year when Shane opened up to us about his life and I hoped to develop the story further by documenting some of the other men. Although most of the men were very helpful and friendly, I felt that some simply viewed me as a nosy journalist, poking around in their personal business. I knew that it would be difficult for them to trust me, when many have possibly never been able to depend on anyone in their lives.

I knew right then that these men were never going to open up to me, unless I opened up to them, and that our relationship would have to be a symbiotic one based on empathy and trust. The three men I decided to focus on were, Shane Viljoen, Willie Oelosfe and Trevor Gillespie, three different men, from different walks of life.

Shane Viljoen (47) became involved with drugs when he was twelve years old and has battled addiction his whole life. Although his father died when he was young, he describes his upbringing as reasonably stable. However, Shane could not stay out of trouble and at 19 years old he was sentenced to eight years in jail for car theft. “You don’t want to remember it, you want to shut it off from your mind,” says Shane when talking about his years in jail.

After his years in jail, Shane became a pimp in Port Elizabeth in order to fuel his drug addiction. “It was a situation I wasn’t forced into, but it was one way for me to survive, if I didn’t do it someone else would. There is a huge market for prostitution in South Africa, because drug addicts are getting younger and younger, because their fathers and mothers are drug addicts. I worry that my children will go that way,” says Shane.

Shane’s three children live with his ex-girlfriend at a safe house in Port Elizabeth. She denies Shane any contact with the children. Shane hopes that one day he will be able to have a relationship with his children, but he is not confident that he won’t relapse if he leaves Salem Crossroads. “It would be more familiar for me to fall back into that lifestyle, than any other lifestyle.”

Trevor Gillespie (58) has lived at Salem Crossroads for about a year and describes his upbringing as “dysfunctional”. He says he seldom attended school, being “left to do my own thing”. He went to work at sea at 14 years old and at 16 started drinking heavily. “If it wasn’t for the bottle I would have my own boat by now”. For most of his life he has worked on bulk carriers as a radio operator and says he only feels at home when he is out at sea. After Trevor’s second wife was hijacked and shot, Trevor’s drinking problem escalated and he lost the ability to take care of his four children. His children live in England with his sister and he does not have any contact with them. “They’re happy and financially secure; I’d rather not interfere there.” Trevor has been at Salem for nearly one year and stopped drinking nine months ago. He is confident that he has changed his ways and once he passes his medical test, plans to go back to sea.

Willie Oeslofe (57) has been at Salem Crossroads for three years. He is fond of animals and enjoys working in the bush. During his married years, Willie described himself as a social drinker but when he discovered his wife was having an affair his drinking escalated. Willie left his wife and two daughters in Johannesburg and hit the road. “I couldn’t share my wife with another man so I gave her the house; everything and I left.” He has not seen or spoken to his daughters for 14 years. Willie worked for his brother for a while, until his brother shot himself. Afterwards Willie’s drinking problem got worse. He used to be a commercial artist and sign writer and still freelances for a small income. Willie plans to leave Salem at the end of the year, contact his daughters and start a new life for himself.

I hoped that these photographs would honestly show the situation that these men have fallen into. I believe that people can relate to these men, as I did, on a universal scale and not just in a South African context. In this sense I believe the piece is powerful. Their stories tell us about a kind of situation and breakdown which anyone of us could stumble into. My aim is to show that these men should not be forgotten, judged or frowned upon by society but rather given another chance.

My hope is that the viewer will in one way or another be able to relate to these men, whether they have experienced the same problems themselves or know someone who has, whether they have had an addiction or whether they have lost contact with their loved ones. My motivation is that this piece can in some small way offer hope to someone who needs it.

This project has been an important learning curve for me. It has pushed me far beyond the boundaries that I ever expected to go as a student photographer. I have formed a relationship with people that under normal circumstances I never would have met and I have learnt a great deal from them.