Children, interrupted
Wednesday September 27, 2006
Anthea RowanWhen my eight year old daughter, Hattie, announced she was going to spend a morning with the street children as part of a class investigation into the Rights of the Child, and wanted help preparing questions, her older siblings leapt in with: ?Ask them if they sniff glue?? Hattie wrinkled her nose to demonstrate how distasteful she thought that would be. ?Ask them where they live,? suggested her brother. She wasn?t impressed with that either. She knew where the street children lived: on the streets, of course. She sloped off to make up her own questions.
Street children are a ubiquitous feature of many third world towns and cities, and there are ? according to local street children charity Mkombozi ? between 1,000 and 1,500 children living on the streets of Arusha alone, the town nearest to where I live in Tanzania. They end up on the streets for many reasons: because they are sent out to beg by their parents, because they are escaping violent homes, because they are orphans. But mainly because they do not have a choice.
I joined Hattie?s class on their field trip. We interviewed two boys, Hasani (9) and Lengai (7). ?Do you pray and what do you pray for?? we asked.
?To go to school?, the children told us, ?like you?. The interviewers looked askance; who?d pray to go to school?
?Do you have fun on the streets??
?Oh yes, when we play football,? they answered.
?If you could choose any house in the world, what would it look like?? It would have a television, and big gates.
?How do you keep warm at night??
?By wrapping ourselves up in plastic bags.? (Except that my daughter wrote ?rape? and I thought what tragic irony there was in her misspelling; sexual abuse is a reality for these children).
?What do you dream about??
?Having a family,? replied Hasani, looking at his feet. A ?lack of love? is identified as a primary dislike of street life; children crave non-abusive human contact ? even a smile or a brief greeting, ?Mambo?, to enquire of their day.
My daughter and her classmates were not intimidated by the street children. Whatever shyness they may have felt was born of the natural wariness with which children regard one another. If the interviews were difficult it was only because neither spoke the other?s language with much fluency.
We drove across town for a picnic. Hasani sat in the front seat; he had not been in a car before. I helped him put on his seatbelt and wound down his window. I wasn?t used to seeing him laugh much, but sitting in my car made him laugh and shout at the pedestrians he knew, attracting attention to himself. The children on the back seat argued about what the time was. I asked Hasani and he pointed to the clock in the dashboard; ?two minutes past ten,? he said. Impressed silence from the rear.
During the picnic my daughter did not notice that Hasani ate very little but stuffed almost everything he was offered into a plastic bag. I questioned the social worker, Pascas, who was accompanying us. He explained that their appetites were probably suppressed after a night spent sniffing glue. He explained that the glue helped them to forget they were cold and hungry . . . helped them to forget most things. Briefly. But he also pointed out that the boys didn?t necessarily horde food in anticipation of their own hunger later on. They formed their own ?families? on the streets, and they would be taking food back to the others in the clan.
Hattie noticed that some of the street children said thank you when they were offered a biscuit. She noticed that others didn?t; not so different from the kids in your class then, I commented. She and her girlfriends watched the boys ? from school and street ? doing handstands and cartwheels on the grass; little boys show off the world over, whilst little girls giggle and pretend not to be impressed. If the street children had been dressed as ours were, nobody would have noticed them. As it was, the street vendors tried to weed them out of our little group as we walked through town to be shown where they slept (in a storm drain), where they got food, where they played football. The street kids sought out hands to hold.
These children, the social worker told me, do not beg because they are hungry; they want money for glue, for dope, for alcohol. Surviving is easier when they can stop thinking about living. I ask him what we ought to do when the street children beg at car windows. To give them money would seem to promote a drug dependency (as they don?t need to use the money for food; many of the street vendors and shop keepers are generous with fruit and bread), but to ignore them is to waste a precious chance to interact.
Or to incur their wrath (hunger and sleeplessness, the painful awakening to their reality as they come down from a glue-induced high can make them quick tempered). The social worker agrees. ?It?s a problem,? he sighs. A resourceful friend keeps a supply of biscuits in her car and hands these out when she parks in town and is swamped by small boys begging for a few pennies. She wonders if she oughtn?t to be handing out cartons of milk instead. ?For the calcium,? she says.
At the end of our outing the street children ? anxious to get back to their own lives to regale disbelievers with the tale of their morning ? bade polite farewells and shook each of us by the hand. And then they disappeared.
Later I asked Hattie how she felt about her experience. ?I felt sad because the street children don?t have nice homes.? Then: ?But I felt happy too, because we gave them food and toothbrushes.? My 14-year-old son told me he wouldn?t want to spend a day with the street children. I wanted to know why ? would he feel intimidated? Or worry who might see him trailing about town clutching a street kid?s hand as his little sister had done?
?No,? he said. ?It would make me feel uncomfortable. I have so much, they have nothing.? I knew what he meant.
If Hattie learned nothing, if she wasn?t old enough to take on the enormity of a distressing social problem, it didn?t matter; she was young enough to give the street kids something their lives had robbed them of: a few hours of the untroubled innocence of childhood.
And in doing so she reminded me of something I had forgotten: that street kids are still just kids.
Kate McAlpine and Mkombozi Centre for Street Children
Kate McAlpine, a young English mother, moved to Tanzania ten years ago. She established Mkombozi, a UK-registered charity for street children, in 1997. Mkombozi?s work differs from most facilities that offer support and shelter because it works energetically ? and politically ? to tackle the problems that force children onto the street at grass root level. 50% of Tanzania?s population is under 15, 30% of them are vulnerable to ending up on the street. Click here to visit the Mkombozi website.Kate, an Oxford graduate, recently introduced the Big Brother Big Sister approach: the largest and oldest (since 1904) mentoring programme in the world. It is already reaping positive results. As a result of her efforts, Kate was nominated for a woman of the year award in the UK last year. She says she was ?brought up to believe it was my moral duty to try to make a difference?. Kate might not change her world. But she might just help street kids to change theirs.
What you can do if you encounter street children where you live
- Show the children some kindness and respect when you come across them
- Give support to those organisations that strive to look after street children
- Try to understand the complex, often devastating, issues that push a child to the streets, rather than demonising them
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