Cheap playing cards slapping against concrete — “Twa! Twa!” — are louder than you might think. And in a leafy rectangle of grass and concrete in the shadow of the Hillbrow Tower, it is what punctures the hum of the inner-city’s pedestrian traffic.
But, according to some of the park’s daily users, the environment also has something to do with those cheap cards.Timothy Maphosa, 45, is one of the men who spend their afternoons on the northern fringe of Barnato Park playing Casino. Played either between two players or two teams of two players each , the game revolves around fairly basic but rapid addition, with players combining cards to add up to the tricks established by their partners and opponents.
After a stint packing supermarket shelves, Maphosa became a security guard in the early 2000s. He now works security at large events, like sport matches and music concerts, when he can get a shift. But he struggles to secure regular work.For Maphosa, cards in the park offer respite from this uncertainty. He comes here “to push time, to kill time. If I am here, I forget about those stresses. The concentration on Casinodistracts me.
Like Maphosa, Mthunzi says that spending an afternoon at play in the park is a healthy distraction from otherwise difficult days. Since arriving in SA towards the end of 2019, he has been unable to find the work he had been hoping for. Draughts, he says, “keeps my mind from just thinking. There are many things to be stressed and depressed about. I find this helps me. Before I know it, it is sunset, and I did not smoke, I did not steal.
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