Once a week, 19-year-old Thulani comes home from school in Khayelitsha, changes out of his uniform, eats, and heads straight for the train station. No one reminds him. No one has to. It’s simply what he does — and has done, without fail, for four years.
Thulani is a Net Buddy at our Khayelitsha site, and every session with his mentor, Raphael, begins with the same short but meaningful journey: one stop by train to the LaunchPad. It sounds simple. But for a teenager balancing school, family, and everything else that comes with growing up, choosing to make that trip — session after session, year after year — is its own quiet act of determination.
It hasn’t always been an easy ride, literally. Thulani is upfront about the setbacks: trains that run late, sometimes getting cancelled, and on busy days, carriages so packed during rush hour that the ride can feel unsafe. But he takes it in stride. “You just have to be patient and wait for it to move forward,” he says — a mindset that says as much about his character as it does about public transport in Cape Town.
What keeps him going isn’t obligation. When asked what carries him through on the days the trip feels like too much, Thulani doesn’t hesitate: “I think about the happy moments I’ll have with Mr Raphael. That motivates me to go and talk to him.” It’s a relationship, not a routine, that pulls him back to the LaunchPad every time.
That relationship, he says, has changed him. “Joining Infinite Family helped me face all my fears and pushed me to become a better person. Whenever I felt like giving up, my mentor Raphael was always there for me with ideas and guidance.” What began as an unfamiliar commitment slowly became something he chose for himself. “As time went on, I started enjoying it and decided to make it part of my life.”
At 19, Thulani has already learned to hold onto that kind of clarity — knowing what matters to him and following through without being told to. It shows in the advice he’d give another Net Buddy weighing whether the travel is worth it: “Know what you want and don’t get discouraged. Be full of life. If you have no direction, you won’t enjoy anything. Enjoy what you do and don’t do things because of peer pressure. Choose your friends wisely. The travelling is worth it because you get gifts like hoodies, trips, food, drinks, motivation, and encouragement.”
Looking back, Thulani sees the journey itself as part of what shaped him. “The journey made me into the young man I am now. What I learned in the sessions I’ve applied in my life, and it worked. I’m grateful for that.”