Street kids Is there hope?

Dec 07, 2012

Everywhere you turn in some parts of Kampala, street children own the pavements and traffic islands. Is this a permanent situation or is there hope that things will change some day? Jeff Lule writes


By Jeff Lule

Everywhere you turn in some parts of Kampala, street children ownthe pavements andtraffic islands. Is this apermanent situation or is there hope that things will change some day? Jeff Lule writes

Seated in a taxi, my attention is drawn to two young girls who quickly advance to the taxi, as we stop at the traffic lights along Jinja Road. “Uncle mpayo ekikumi,” they chorus in Luganda, asking for sh100. Several passengers shut their windows, while others bark at them, taunting them to return to Karamoja. I fish out sh500 for each and they smile and thank me before rushing to another taxi. The lights turn green and we have to proceed.

The girls scamper to the pavement for safety. It is not any different at the traffic lights near Shoprite Supermarket along Entebbe road. In every direction, children between the ages of three and 15 wander along the pedestrian ways. A woman clad in a tattered yellow blouse and black skirt, with a baby strapped to her back, looks hungry.

Suspicion is written all over her face as I take photographs. As the cars move, other street people gather to share the collections from the compassionate passengers. Usually, the old ones bully the young ones and grab the collections. Boda boda cyclists and Policemen from the nearby Police posts intervene.

Baby beggers
Toddlers not more than two years old, with running noses and in tattered clothes, are placed at strategic points. As they endure the scorching sun, which is intended to play on the psyche of passersby, the little ones’ hands are raised and they cry endlessly as women stand at a distance waiting for what is given to the toddlers.

As I approach one of the toddlers, a furious woman carrying her baby hurls insults at me. She attempts to grab my camera but I dash and still manage to take a photo of the child. She tears the child away and takes off. The cyclists caution me about the hostility of the street beggars.

One wonders where these kids come from, how they survive, and where they sleep. In fact, it has turned into a blame game between city authorities, the Government, MPs from Karamoja where the majority hail from and child organisations. At around 6:15pm, most of the children start getting off the streets heading to Kisenyi, a city slum.

I trail them. But along the way they turn into a tiny path between many houses. Moses Kawudu, a resident of the area cautions me that it is a no-go zone for strangers. He then shows me a safer path.

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Young boys rest at a rubbish damp
Bare living
The residence of most of the street families is on a raised area and I can see it from a distance. The houses are like temporary scrap stores made of old iron sheets and timber. The place is in Kakajo zone and I have to walk cautiously to avoid garbage and dirt-fi lled potholes. On arrival, several ladies and other street children advance towards me demanding to know what I want. I ask for their leader. Prossy Apio, the chairperson of the Karamojong community here has just left for Katwe where other street kids live, but her deputy Patricia Lotuke agrees to talk.

Lotuke 26, also from Karamoja, came to Kampala as a street kid and now has three children of her own, aged between one and seven years. Her predicament started in 1998 when a Munyankore woman got her from Karamoja. She worked as a house girl for about six years in Mbale but was later abandoned. This forced her to move to Kampala where she started begging until 2011 when she secured a job as a gardener with Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA).

Lotuke now earns sh150,000 per month. She was forced to bring her young sister, Esther Lochoro, 14, to look after her children when she goes to work. “Our friends take our children and use them to beg when we are away. I don’t like it because I can now afford to look after them,” she notes.

Many of them, especially girls, spend their day around maize mills and Owino market sorting beans and maize to earn a living. As much as they spend their day under the sun begging or doing petty jobs, the night comes with no relief either. Lotuke says 30 people can share a room at a cost of sh1,000 each. Over 500 children live in this area.

Why the streets
Lotuke says many parents send their children back home, but the children find conditions too hard and still come back to the streets. “The Government always sends them back to Karamoja without providing any thing. The need for survival pushes the children back to the streets.” She, however, says some organisations like Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) and Retrak Uganda provide them with food and clothes.

The secretary general for National Council for Children, Martin Kizza attributes the problem of street kids to poverty, poor parenting, peer pressure, hostile domestic environment and being orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. He, however, notes that numbers have reduced due to Government interventions like resettling these children back to their families and communities. Kizza says there is need to enforce the legal frameworks to protect the children’s rights as per Article 34 of the 1995 constitution.

Rehabilitation efforts
UWESO-Masulita Children’s Village (MCV) is housed under what used to be UWESO’s chilldren’s home in Masulita sub-county, Wakiso district. The home is an initiative of the First Lady and minister in charge of Karamoja, Janet Museveni.

The state minister for Karamoja, Barbara Nekesa, says they use the home as a transit centre where these children spend three months under rehabilitation and later transfer them to Kobulin Youth Centre in Napak district for further skills training.

The home offers psycho-social support, counselling, simple literacy skills and treatment. Over 100 children are under rehabilitation and are already adjusting to normal life. Like other children’s homes, it provides breakfast, lunch and supper. The home is managed by UWESO and the ministry of Karamoja affairs in conjunction with ministry of gender and KCCA.

Siblings Lucia Aboka 11, and Joseph Aboiboi 5, are some of the children who were relocated to MCV. Aboka says they were rounded up from Clock Tower at around 8:00am one morning, put in a Police bus and taken to the new home. “Our mother stays in Katwe. She used to send us to beg at Clock Tower. The collections were used to buy food and pay rent,” she narrates. Nekesa says Karamojong leaders are allowed to visit the children at the home. Of every 10 street children, eight are from Karamoja, Nekesa reveals.

First published in Discovery Magazine (Sunday Vision) July 8, 2012:
Vision Group Resource Centre



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