Car guard struggles after injury
2010-03-25
Lise Beyers
THE one moment I was directing a vehicle out of a parking bay, and the next I was lying on the ground in severe pain.” Euloge Milandou spoke from his hospital bed this week, after he was run down in a freak accident in the parking area of the Metropolitan Shopping Centre in downtown Paarl. Milandou was hit by a car last week, when the elderly motorist wanted to brake as he reversed out of a parking spot and instead stepped on the pedal of the accelerator. The car scooped Milandou off the ground, smashing him against the rear of a stationary vehicle. Both his legs were broken, one so severely that he had to undergo an operation to mend it with steel pins. Ahead of Milandou lies an uncertain future. “My legs are my work and it looks as if I will not be able to get back to work for many weeks, if not months.” Milandou has been living in South Africa since 2004 and is married to Mbekweni resident, Nontsikeleko. He is now the sole bread-winner in the house, as his wife was retrenched from Novo Fruit Packers last year, after the company was hit by a devastating fire. He also cares for her 14-year-old son, as well as two children back in his homeland, Congo-Brazzaville. Milandou studied art and came to South Africa in search of a better future. Although he has sold various works of art to galleries in Cape Town, he has not yet found the green grass which he had envisaged and has to put food on the table by working as a car guard. And because he is only a temporary resident, he does not yet qualify for a social grant. Anybody who can assist Milandou’s family in any way, can contact Paarl resident Robin Graves at 021-863-3902.
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