OPINION | How spending a night on the street transformed my view on homelessness
Participants of U-Turn’s “Night on the Street” spent a night on the pavement.
Image: Ian Landsberg/Independent Media
By Wendy Dondolo
I’ve spent some time writing about homelessness, interviewing women who live on the streets, in alleyways, in makeshift shelters made of plastic and hope.
I’ve come across mothers raising babies on cardboard, to men rebuilding their lives after addiction, and even young people cast out by a society that barely notices them.
But on Saturday, I did something different. I stepped out from behind my notepad and spent a night on the streets myself.
It wasn’t performative. It wasn’t brave. It was necessary.
As part of U-Turn’s Night on the Street campaign, I joined others in sleeping outside SMG BMW Cape Town to raise awareness and funds for the organisation’s homeless rehabilitation work.
For one night, I gave up the comfort of a warm bed and stepped into a fraction of the discomfort that comes with life on the streets.
Participants of U-Turn’s “Night on the Street” spent a night on the pavement.
Image: Ian Landsberg / Independent Media
I didn’t do this to understand what it means to be homeless, because one night could never teach me that.
What it did teach me was something far more personal: that empathy, real empathy, requires proximity.
It requires sitting in someone else’s world, even if only for a few hours, to feel the bite of the cold, the unease of unfamiliar noises, and the sharp awareness that you are exposed.
As a journalist, I’ve often wondered whether telling someone’s story is enough. Does writing about homelessness create real change? Or am I just documenting pain without participating in healing?
That question haunted me as I lay on the concrete, surrounded by others also choosing discomfort for a cause.
We shared her story, her voice trembling as she said all she wanted was to be reunited with her children.
Weeks later, her daughter saw the video and reached out. They were reunited after 27 years. Patricia has a family again.
Participants of U-Turn’s “Night on the Street” spent a night on the pavement.
Image: Ian Landsberg / Independent Media
That moment reaffirmed why we do what we do in the newsroom.
But that night on the street reaffirmed why we must do more than write. We must listen differently. Report differently. Engage differently.
Sleeping outside didn’t make me an expert. It made me more human.
I no longer see "the homeless" as only a category to cover. I see individuals, some victims, some fighters, some flawed, just like the rest of us. And that shift, however small, changes everything about how I tell their stories.
And to the women I’ve interviewed: thank you for trusting me with your stories. This time, I tried to walk a little in yours. I’m still listening. I always will be.
* Wendy Dondolo is a junior journalist at IOL.
** The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of Independent Media or IOL.
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