Children

Addictive freedom of street life

By Doreen Nawa
THE thought of a child resorting to gangs, drugs, stealing, and forced prostitution to survive is unspeakable and saddening to all.
But as many Government departments, missionaries and charitable agencies working with street children have learned, reaching out and trying to love and give these children a future is no easy task.
Joseph Kalyata, 14, narrates that being kept in an orphanage is the worst thing he could do. Joseph recalls the day he was taken to an orphanage in Lusaka’s Chilenje Township after spending three years on the streets.
Joseph agreed to stay with other orphans at the centre but after a month, he went back to the streets.
Asked why he had to go back to a place where he is sleeping in the cold without blankets, Joseph says he is more free on the streets than being under the authority of foster guardians.
Trouble started in 2003 when both of his parents died and he was left in the custody of his late mother’s young sister.
Joseph says before his parents died, he led a normal and decent life in Kabwe but things became sour when his aunt started mistreating him.
One day, Joseph thought of his father’s relatives in Lusaka and boarded a train. By then he did not have an idea of what Lusaka looked like. But because of the treatment he was given by the aunt, Joseph never bothered to get details of the relatives to the father.
“My father died first and later my mother died too, then my aunt volunteered to keep me. My aunt has no job. She supported us by selling things at the market. She has six children, three boys and three girls and until the end of 2003 I was in school.”
“But as things got worse, my aunt suggested that I should quit school and start selling roasted cassava at the railway station because she had more and more difficulties in buying enough food for us to eat,” Joseph recalls.
His aunt urged him to leave school and become a vendor in early 2004 when it became clear that it meant her aunt alone could not support the family on her own.
“I was in grade three and one day my aunt said I could help the family more if I left school to be a vendor. I didn’t want to leave school but I thought the family might earn enough to buy ourselves some nice clothes and food, and bring money home to my family, so I agreed to do it.”
“I brought some money home and I helped my aunt a lot but to my surprise I was mistreated beyond my understanding. I used to go in the morning at the railway station without eating breakfast. Now I regret leaving school because I miss my friends, and I didn’t know this would be so hard. I suffer a lot but there is nothing I can do.”
“Here (on the street) on a good day I make sometimes 10 pin (K10, 000) but there are many days when I don’t make anything,” says Joseph.
Poverty and HIV/AIDS are sending a growing number of children onto Zambian streets, where most have few options other than begging or sex work to get by.
But when the Government offered a young and homeless Joseph an opportunity to access better living conditions last year, he turned it down. Instead he ran away from the orphanage and went back to the street.
He believed that the rehabilitation and transformation programme in these orphanages was an attempt to decongest the streets by dumping street children in ‘concentration orphanages’.
Today, Joseph says he does not regret the decision. He is a drug addict and the streets of the capital, Lusaka, are still his home. He says he is happier on the streets because he can now do any desires of his heart without interference from anyone.
Minister of Community Development and Social Welfare, Catherine Namugala says street life is addictive and children enjoy it because there are no rules on the streets.
Ms Namugala says it is not an easy thing to rehabilitate street children because of the life they expose themselves to on the streets.
“Street life is addictive. When a child goes on the street, first they get scared of the environment but afterwards, they become used and it is very difficult to rehabilitate them once they reach that stage (accepting life on the street),” she says.
There are more than 1,200 children who have been rehabilitated under the Government programme, and the programme has helped open doors for the reformed children.
Ms Namugala says the Government provides children who are willing to be kept in orphanages and opportunity to live decent lives.
“We send these children to adoption centres to be rehabilitated and acquire skills but, above all, we are instilling discipline. They are not allowed to smoke cigarettes or drink any alcoholic beverages, and the confinement does not allow them to keep cash that can allow them to buy such things,” she says.
Zambia officially has about 75,000 street children, but it is estimated that almost twice that number roam the streets.
According to a study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), most youngsters living rough or in prostitution were orphans.
The minister says life is better and enjoyed anywhere in the world when one has rules and learns to be responsible.
Ms Namugala admitted that the addictiveness of street children to life on the street was the major challenge that the Government was facing despite the introduction of many initiatives meant to transform and rehabilitate the affected children.
Betty Banda, 16, who lives rough with her aged grandmother in residential plots in Makeni’s Bonaventure area, has urged the Government to extend the vocational skills training and transformation programme in former Zambia National Service (ZNS) camps in Kitwe and Katete to include girls. So far only boys have been admitted.
“I didn’t know that the Government was offering us an opportunity to reform through skills training and rehabilitation. I would like to go if I’m given a chance,” she said, with a 20-litre bucket of water on her head.
Betty says getting a skill from an orphanage or ZNS camp would be the greatest dream come true. Betty says she stopped school in grade seven after the death of her parents and since then, she has never had an opportunity to get back to school.
Ms Namugala says that the training and adoption centres give the children an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.
“Can you imagine how good it will be if our children and youth can obtain skills, and how much money they will make and sustain themselves? Poverty can be eradicated if these children get skills and are taught to be responsible,” she says.
The minister urged Zambians to prioritise family values and to provide a support system for HIV/AIDS orphans.
“Family values are breaking up because of HIV/AIDS-related cases, and people are no longer willing to take responsibility for orphans. We are a very cultured society and have for a long time believed in extended families. We should look beyond our own children if society’s moral fibre is to be maintained,” she says.
Zambia has an adult HIV prevalence rate of 15.5 per cent. Many of the kids, dressed in filthy rags, are regarded as a threat to society due to their anti-social behavior.
Near the traffic lights at Manda Hill complex in Lusaka, a big poster warns the public not to give money or food to the street children, euphemistically referred to as “street kids.”
According to the poster, giving money or food only causes the children to remain on the street.
Children, both girls and boys, turn to the streets in search of a better life but the reality that confronts them can only be described as depressing.
Street life creates extreme vulnerability to violence, exploitative and hazardous labour, sex-work and trafficking.
Many of the so-called street kids are part of a generation of children that is growing up without parental care, support or guidance despite the Government offering some an opportunity to better their lives. The children are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and disease.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that there are approximately 1,250,000 orphans in Zambia that is, one in every four Zambian children with about 50 per cent under nine years of age.