Child survival on Kampala's mean streets

By Mary Nabutufe

For over half a decade, the streets of Kampala have continued to be gradually densely populated by street beggars, most barely children of school going age.

Last evening, walking the upper side of Kampala town, along Entebbe Road near Aristoc Bookshop, I chanced on a group of beautiful but shabbily dressed street children. Like they have done for years, these were begging passerby, cyclists and car passengers for shilling coins tossed their way.

Among the well-positioned child beggars, I spied a young girl of between seven to nine years. Later, she said her name was Asha. She proved herself distinctively creative. During her begging session, she ‘dances for cash', adding flavour to the tense situation that usually creeps up when begging. Throughout her dance routines, she gives potential Good Samaritans a little entertainment.

And she is great at it. Unrushed by the fact that the cars are kept immobile in the jam or not, she carries on with non-uniform intervals of either chit-chatting while seated on the road shoulder pavements, or dancing to what seems like an amalgamation of a native and modern dance. With a squashed mineral water bottle in her left hand and using the right hand to slap the bottle, she slightly bends her back and lifts her left leg all at the same time; one could visualise a traditional dancer holding a calabash in one hand and a bunch of the short and thin metallic stick-looking spikes in the other. She has rhythm, she projects grace rather than the sad-face many associate with street kids.

Dancing as she sings what could be an original composition of "Mpaa ko ekikumi", literally meaning "give me one hundred shillings", she captivates attention rather than scorn. Unlike her juniors, she uses this exclusive creative and entertaining approach to increase the money she collects from begging.

In casting her spell, Asha's innovation causes the road users to smile, laugh or even toss a coin her way in response. Realising that the tactic is yielding; she at times switches from the traditional dance, to what vaguely mirrors an unperfected performance of "Stamina" dance.

Watching her from a distance, unlike her other group mates, she does not opt for faking a desperate character while begging. Rather, she is playful and innovatively creative about the whole affair; a practice that lightens the somber mood of the exhausted evening travelers.

Asha spends most of her day on the streets of Kampala collecting money from begging despite her biggest challenge—language barrier. She speaks three broken languages, excluding her mother tongue, Ngakarimojong, in order to express herself. In a single sentence, she uses mixed word picked from Swahili, English, Luganda and her Ngakarimojong language.

In a brief chat with Asha, she reveals she lives in Katanga, one of the slums found in Kampala. However, a direct translation of what she adds is "I want money to buy posho and eat."

Later, to further my understanding of the predicament of street children like Asha, I spoke to Stephen Mutibwa, a lecturer at Makerere University, Faculty of Statistics. He says these children do not usually act alone. Their parents hide as they monitor the collection of each child then afterwards take it from them. "Instead of being taken to school, these children are used by their parents or relatives as manpower to collect money by begging on the streets..." he adds.

Eric Madanda, an ACCA student at Makerere University Business School, also advised the government to demarcate a settlement area for the homeless Karimojong children in Kampala like it did for the Acholi Quarters in Kinawataka. He went on to say that the Government should construct schools for these children so as to empower them instead of begging for money.

This was in line with the 2013 suggestion by UNICEF that some of the street children are school dropouts. Schools, therefore, should come up with school programmes like football that keep children in school. However, several attempts in the past by the Government to vacate the child beggars from the streets in Kampala have yielded no change.

Meanwhile, as the sun sets over Kampala, Asha is still busy at work. Dancing, singing and collecting coins on the street. In the absence of a coherent policy to support her and her street kin, this is the life she is condemned to live.