When Igboanugo Anyichukwu comes to Salzburg for the first time, he does something that many people do: he gets on the bus No. 150 in the direction of Bad Ischl. While the people sitting next to him eagerly whip out their cameras, Igboanugo is travelling to the Caritas emergency shelter. But because the bus driver forgets to let him get off at the right stop, he ends up making the journey through the picture-postcard idyll – to the end of the line, where the forgetful driver realises their mistake.
A little later, Igboanugo will think back on this odyssey. While looking for a suitable place to set himself up, he remembers seeing a supermarket at the entrance to St. Gilgen. He took the bus to the Salzkammergut region for a second time and introduced himself to the owner of the shop as an Apropos vendor. And so it happened that the sales career of a man from a village in southern Nigeria began in St. Gilgen on Lake Wolfgang.
Six days per week, Igboanugo sold his magazines to locals and holidaymakers in the area. He saved the money that he earns with a grim determination, and when the summer visitors returned to their hotels in the evening, he slipped into his sleeping bag. For weeks, he slept in some bushes, washed himself down by the lake and, in his own words, ate “like a dog,” only to be back outside the supermarket the next morning.
Looking back, he says that he is glad to have had this experience, because now he knows what it means to have no roof over your head. It is a view that suits the quiet and reflective man – a quiet belief that nothing happens in life without reason.
And yet, there were things that he had to get use to at the beginning. The cold in winter, which he did not know from his homeland. The empty streets on Christmas Eve. The way that people do not greet strangers. And yet he liked it there.
He describes the feeling he has had since his arrival in St. Gilgen as a kind of inner peace. And he felt part of this community, even though he didn’t know many people yet. Only once did an older man loudly berate him in front of the supermarket, telling him to leave and find a real job. Was that racism? Igboanugo thinks about this for a while and then shakes his head. What did that man know about his struggles of yesterday and his plans for tomorrow, about the daily effort that it takes to get from one to the other?
He needed a room and a permanent job. Then, one day, the money should be enough for his wife and daughter to come to Austria.
When the owners of the supermarket found out that Igboanugo was sleeping rough, they helped him to find a room. It was an important step – perhaps the most important for a person living on the street: with an address, his chances of getting a job and a regular income increased. He now has the prospect of a job with a cleaning company.
Then there is his additional income as a market trader. Every Sunday, Igboanugo comes to Salzburg to sell items that he has been given or bought from others at the flea market on Münchner Bundesstraße. He says that people have no idea what treasures are lying around in their cellars and attics and how valuable the supposed junk is for many people in his home country.
When he talks about his work at the flea market, you can tell that it is a passion. Buying and selling goods, setting prices and talking to customers: it’s a talent. Who knows where it will take him?
Translated from German by Lisa Luginbuhl
Courtesy of Apropos / INSP.ngo
