Story and photos by Caeri Dunnell

On the streets of Grahamstown, it is not difficult to find someone who has experienced living in poverty.
Patrick Stafaans, 34, and his fellow lily sellers represent the face of some of the poorest. But, although  unemployed, they are actively finding ways to survive by trading in cut flowers outside Peppergrove Mall.

Typically Stafaans rises at 5.30am and leaves his home in Vukani at 6am, to make his way to the rivers near Grahamstown Correctional Services, where he hopes to find arum lilies. The lilies are hard to spot amongst  the dense foliage – on a good day he’ll pick up to 15 bunches, but sometimes they are overpicked and there are none to be found.

As he picks his crop, he can hear the prisoners eating breakfast at the nearby prison, knowing his next meal is more of a hope than a certainty. Balancing the lilies on his head he begins the long walk to Allen Street, taking a little-used direct route down the mountain.

The work is both demanding and mundane, with the rigours of searching for and picking the flowers combined with the tedium of sitting for hours, waiting for customers.

At the end of a long day, Stafaans returns to his RDP house to relax. He is not happy with the house that is badly built, and his dream is to take over his deceased mother's house, to extend it and fix up the garden too. But he does not even make enough money to live and often relies on a soup kitchen in the township for food. He longs for proper employment and a chance to better his life. He had entered into an agreement with a local mother and daughter who sell lavender and makes R2 for every R5 plant sold. The benefit is that he does not have to pick it, but it makes less money.

“Something is better than nothing,” he says.

Patrick Stafaans sells lilies at the side of the road in Grahamstown as a way of creating his own income. The Eastern Cape has a 27.7% unemployment rate (2010), and more than 60% live below the offi cial poverty line.	The sun shines through the mist as Patrick makes his way back to Allen Street. He will bunch the lilies while he waits for customers.	Patrick listens to the radio on his cellphone. Every day he comes to sell his fl owers, otherwise he will not survive. The cycle starts again tomorrow; up early to pick, long hours of waiting for a sale, then relaxing at home.
Patrick lives in Vukani location in a rundown RDP house which he cannot afford to repair	Patrick and friends, Xolani Mpangiso and Siphiwo Nabo. customers. They raise their fi sts to Jah, in Rasta solidarity. Patrick is not a proper Rasta, although he appreciates the lifestyle, the dreads and the colours. The three friends spend many...	Patrick wades through thick foliage in search of the lilies he hopes to sell