SEPTEMBER 13, 2014 |  ALEX MEETS WORLD

        Simon is a Rasta man. Born in Malawi and now living in Langa, a four hour train ride from Simon’s Town, South Africa, he sits almost every day until sunset in a colorful shirt and a tan, checkered suit jacket on the side of the road in Simon’s Town selling paintings to passing tourists on their way to see the Boulder Beach African penguin colony.

        “Sometimes, we sell. Sometimes, we no sell,” he said.

        But even that fact is an improvement from his days selling paintings in Camps Bay where he would say “Sometimes, we sell one. Sometimes, we get a trouble for the law enforcement.”

          It was six years ago that Simon moved to Cape Town from Johannesburg. Pretoria, however, is the place he calls home.

        He was 16 when he moved to South Africa.

          “For me to move to Malawi to come here is like a repatriation for my mother,” he said.

          Simon’s roots in Malawi began with his grandmother, a South African woman who married a Malawi man. When his grandfather died, the family moved back to South Africa until a few years later when Simon’s family left once more to escape apartheid.

          “After, when Mandela come out, they decided to come back home,” Simon said. Mandela was released from prison in 1991. Simon and his family moved to Pretoria three years later.

          “Malawi’s my father’s land,” he explained. “Here [South Africa] is like my mother’s land. I’m South African for now because I’m decide for mama.”

          As a child living in Malawi, Simon always felt South African.

          “Mostly, I was decide for mama, so even when we go to the father, we coming like a stranger,” he said.

          Families like Simon’s were looked down upon for marrying outside the Malawi community.

          “People say ‘no. That brother, it was a king. Wasn’t supposed to marry foreign country,’” said Simon, imitating the complaints of Malawi society. “Me myself, I don’t care for to be accepted, but me myself, I’m proud ‘cause I’m Malawi… but if you talk about where my home, exact is Pretoria.”

          Simon now lives in a two-story house with ten other Rasta men from Malawi.

          “We are brothers,” Simon said of his roommates, who are also his business partners. “We’re a crew. We are family. They’re the brothers from Malawi. That is, we’re survival together.”

          The men all met through their common religion and fatherland and the common struggle to make ends meet.

          “When they [the brothers] come here, sometimes maybe, they are desperate, so we meet, so when a we meet each other, we care each other because we know that everyone is coming from far,” Simon said.

          The struggle for survival is what founded the business selling paintings.

          “We decided what we’re gonna do to survive” Simon said. “Waiting someone to employ us is hard. We don’t always work, so we just started how we survive for ourselves. You know accommodation here in Cape Town is hard you know. It’s expensive. It’s hard for this time for people to keep money.”

          While Simon sells the artwork, other brothers create the pieces on display.

          Although they share an accommodation, a business, and a home country, Simon did not always share the same religion as his brothers from Malawi. He was raised a Christian by his parents, who did not so easily accept his new beliefs.

          “When we become Rasta, we’re becoming like a stranger,” Simon said. “We fight with our parents because they say ‘no. Won’t be Rasta man!’ Always they say ‘you cannot grow crown. You cannot grow dreadlocks in my house’ you know and ‘you started to praise another god. Where about us who give you this god?’ You know the parents they cannot just say yes.”

          Even outside of the house, Simon was criticized for his religion.

          “The pastor say ‘no. You cannot leave the child, your child, like that,’” Simon said. “Sometimes when inside the house, they [my parents] understand, but when a they go to majority to society, it’s coming ‘Eh. My son. I don’t know what I can do.’”

          It took seven years of fighting and trying to show the goodness of Rastafari for Simon’s parents to finally accept his new, Rasta lifestyle.

          “When I sit with them, they see the truth,” Simon said. “Now, they like me. Even they want me to be close to them because I prove myself, you know. They was a think that is a bad person, but years and times, they decide naw, he’s a good man.”

          During the seven years prior to this decision, which Simon describes as the time his parents forsook him, Simon dealt with his parents by giving them respect and keeping a distance.

          “I forgive them,” Simon said. “We forgive them, and we show them love, and they understand what we standing for now. For our parents, for us to trod this way won’t be easy, even to society, even to society outside, even the government, even whatever. We are confusing people. We live a clean life and are promoting peace and love, but to understand even in the way we are looking, people, they don’t believe. They believe you have to look clean, so when you look not, you are not clean.”

          Simon left the Christian church 22 years ago when he was 15 because he believed that the rigid, organized church structure and rules, “conditions” he called them, did not allow him to be a “natural man”.

          “It’s like a food,” he said. “We don’t get full [from other religions], and when we find Rastafari, we notice that we are living clean now, we are living better lives you know than like we used to before.”

          Simon describes his childhood as “nice” and “peaceful”, but life before Rastafari was “not life” he said. “[It was a] good life as the way mama, parents, want.”

          Simon’s lifework now “is to give thanks,” he said. In the mornings, he gives thanks before taking the train to Simon’s Town to work. After the sun has gone down, he takes the train back to his home in Langa to give thanks again before going to bed. The cycle only ever alters on Saturday (the Sabbath) and Friday, when he spends the day preparing for Sabbath.

          With a packed work and prayer schedule, Simon has no time for fun.

          “The Father said ‘no. We mustn’t have the time for fun,’” Simon explained.” Anytime for us is to do Jah works [God’s works]. We are passing by to spread the message for Father.”

          As for the future, Simon doesn’t dwell on it too much. He does not worry about providing because he trusts that God will provide for him.

          “God Himself said He helps people that they help themselves, so when we stand up looking for the bread for today, that is God. He never fail. Always He provide,” Simon said. “We just say give thanks to [God], but give us a life and protecting from the dangerous parts so we can see glory, white hair you know. We think about the future, but the present moment is what is more important you see.”

          For the rest of his life, Simon has only two desires: to go to Zion, Heaven, and to return home to Pretoria, where he hopes to die.

          “We don’t dream nothing except what we have,” he said. “The greatest joy you see is like the way the Father when he opens the gates of Zion to prepare a good place for me to praise him, you know, because like the enjoy for me when I sit down and I feel happy is when I praise the Father, you know. The praise is more joy for us, for me. We just want a to have the time to glorify His name, Hailie Selassie, [a late Ethiopian emperor whom Rastas regard as a Jesus-like figure].”

          While Simon is not a wealthy man, working far from his family and house of brothers, he is content with life.

          “I’m comfortable the way I live,” he said. “If I can have a Benz or a big house but if I don’t live Rasta living, I don’t feeling loyal. Of course, there’s a lot of tribulations we face in this life, but what is more important we don’t want to leave Father Hailie Selassie. We cannot complain. We give thanks because we know our Father. You life is like, sometimes, we stay in good condition, sometimes, we harder situation, but his journey continues. Still trod on. Still trod on because no choice.”

          Looking thoughtfully out into the distance, Simon trod to the side of the road opposite the orange and brown paintings that are his livelihood and took a seat on the grass, under the sun and in the shadows of the late afternoon with a picture of Emperor Hailie Selassie pinned to his lapel and a smile on his bearded face as he preached “one love” to the passersby, his wrapped dreadlocks hanging happily behind him.