the hood

"The tricky thing about the hood is that you're always working, working, working, and you feel like something's happening, but really nothing's happening at all. I was out there every day from seven a.m. to seven p.m., and every day it was: How do we turn ten rand into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? How do I turn fifty into a hundred? At the end of the day we'd spend it on food and maybe some beers, and then we'd go home and come back and it was: How do we turn ten into twenty? How do we turn twenty into fifty? It was a whole day's work to flip that money. You had to walking, be moving, be thinking. You had to get to a guy, meet a guy. There were many days we'd end up back at zero, but I always felt like I'd been very productive."

~~ from Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood by Trevor Noah