Ask this question to many people in Kenya or Uganda and they will tell you ‘those children, they’re just stubborn!’. There’s a common misconception that children actually want to live on the streets. If anybody actually thought about it, they’d realise this opinion doesn’t stand up to challenge. Want to sleep on the pavements, cold and hungry? Want to live in fear of the police? Want to be ignored, invisible or worse yet treated as sub-human. No, nobody would chose this. Not unless the alternative was even worse.
The real reasons why children end up living on the streets range from poverty to abuse or death of guardians. I hear so many stories of abusive step parents. As in anywhere in the world, the majority of people seem to prefer to give birth to biological children, rather than to adopt or foster, unless their hand is forced by infertility. Of course this doesn’t go for all, but if it weren’t generally true there wouldn’t be any children on the streets or in care. In Uganda, there is particular emphasis on a woman being able to birth children – it is expected when a woman marries that she will have children. What happens then, if you marry a man or woman who already has children? Do you love and embrace them as your own – some do – or do you bully them and deprive them, treat them as your servant and generally belittle them until they cant take it any more. You may not be able to ask your spouse to reject their own children, but you can treat them in such a way that they eventually chose to leave. Therefore many of the children living on the streets tell stories of terrible abuse, neglect and shame.
Poverty. Poverty could also be a factor in the scenario above. Every couples resources are finite, and many chose to prioritise biological children. It is not uncommon to find children who have run away from home because they are literally hungry and have gone looking for food. Some may have been encouraged by friends who live or have experienced life on the streets. Certainly in big cities like Kampala it may be easier to find food, but not so in villages and smaller towns; even in Mbale, a town of 532 000 people (1), the children living on the streets are in a terrible condition – literally starving. As stated in the opening paragraph, one has to be desperate to chose street life over the home. There is a caveat to this – sometimes NGO’s such as children’s homes or frontline services can accidentally provide an incentive for children to run away from home, because they are serving better or more food than they would otherwise receive. This is always a challenge for services who have to balance providing for those children living on the streets, whilst not providing so much that children begin running from home.
A third reason why children come to the streets is land eviction and land grabbing, which leaves many children and families without a place to call home. It’s a common human rights abuse, but shockingly underreported worldwide. Families are forcibly evicted from their homes when government sells land on to businesses to be developed. One company, Agilis Partners, based in UK claims to ‘feed the growing population of Africa’ (2) yet according to one online ugandan newspaper (3) was in large part responsible for the eviction of up to 5000 families in March last year. The fall out of this is that families are broken up, people scatter to look for ways to survive.
The most common misconception in the west regarding children living on the streets, is that they’re orphans. Whilst most I speak to have lost at least one parent or have never known one, many do remain with one living parent and are on the streets for one of the reasons above. Even those who have lost both parents, almost always have a living relative. Ideally, those relatives would take the children in, thus keeping the children within the family. This is important for the child’s sense of belonging, inheritance of culture and language, and knowledge of their ancestors. However not all relatives are willing or able to take these children in. This is where NGO’s (or ideally government) could best provide assistance, in supporting families to care for their own children. Support may involve growing schemes or micro financing for small business. Some NGO’s provide the families with school fees for the children, although ofcourse this is not a long term self sustaining solution. The current reality is that there are not enough of these schemes, so there are children living on the streets whose parents have died, and relatives do not take them in. As with the case of biological children being favoured, this situation is not unique to Uganda. If every child needing a home in the UK were taken in by relatives then there would be no care system.
A final reason I will mention (though by no means the only other reason why children come to the streets) is cases where children have become lost, or have been entrusted in the care of a relative or friend who then betrays that trust. The child may have become lost on their way to school because most children in Uganda board (boarding schools are not so elite as in the UK, but rather a way of the children learning most efficiently through 24 hour supervision). Their school may be far away and an interruption could occur on the journey there which results in the child becoming lost. With no mobile phone, they cannot call for help. Such a simple reason which leaves a child homeless. Alternatively, their parent may have sent them to a relative such as an aunt or uncle to care for them – this is not uncommon in Uganda. It may turn out the relative is abusive or neglects the child so that they eventually turn to the street. In these cases, the parent(s) may actually believe the child is well, at school or safe with relatives, only to find out months or even weeks later that they had ended up on the street.
To close I want to acknowledge that the number of children living on the streets in Uganda is not a reflection of the hearts of the people. I know so many people, young people too, who take in children who they either find on the streets, or in need within the community. I am constantly impressed by the strength of young people to care for children only 10 years their junior, sometimes less. The fact that there are still children on the streets despite this is a combination of factors including the ratio of children to adults in Uganda, adult unemployment and early mortality. The main issue therefore is misinformation and stereotypes which lead people to consider the children ‘stubborn’ and unworthy of care.
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