The misery behind living and working on the street.

The misery behind living and working on the street.

By: Abraham Daljang

They are young, full of life and they all have dreams for better future like any of us. But something has gone amiss with their dreams, this could either be from where they are being raised or their own character trait has made them the way they are or perhaps, it could be the widely buzzword known as peer pressure which might have made them leave their homes.

I am talking about South Sudanese’s children working and living on streets, we don’t called them street kids as many people refer to them but we should be human and often we should be euphemistic in referring to their way of life, calling them children working and living on streets carries a slight weight on them than the direct word. Well, we all have children in one way or the other, they could either be our biological children or children of our relatives. We all have obligation to bring these children up in a way that can brighten their future. However, we seem to have all neglected our major roles as parents, and this has caused the misery of the future leaders.

Across South Sudan’s ten states, there are many children living and working on streets, some of them have their parents who might have neglected them and others are orphans while some are being carried away from their homes by their friends who poison their minds with street adventures, hence made them walk out of their homes out of curiosity to see the outside world. Most of these children sleep in an open air on roadsides exposing them to dangerous snakes and harmful insects at night, there is no doubt that their little bodies are laid bare in the merciless cold nights and this could make them contract pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. I was heartbroken one morning when I saw a group of small boys sleeping helplessly near the roadside, one of them woke up, stretched his arms and opened his eyes, the morning lights struck his sleepy face, and he used the back of his hand to shield the bright light off and to accustom his eyes to the bright lights. One could tell from his looks that the boy is young, handsome and could be a great person in future if well nurtured. Some of them who are clever decide to work in local restaurants as waiters and others wash plates to earn them lunch and a few pounds, five or ten. Another group are shoes shiners, they walk with small bags on their backs, packed with cleaning materials, and they get some money too. The other group are pocket pickers, they have ventured into dangerous activity of snatching unattended items and pick-pocketing. The last group are those who hover around local restaurants to wait for any leftover food which they scrambled over as soon as the person leaves the plates to wash his hands.

One of the dangerous thing these boys are undertaking is snatching things and pick-pocketing, one of the boys grabbed a tin can of salt and tried to run away with it, the owner raced after him, griped his shoulder and gave him a hard punch across the face, the boy felt down but then the salt spill over the ground. The onlookers stood arms akimbo, and their mouth wide open with empathy. I felt a pang in my heart as if I was the one being hit; I clenched both my fists and my teeth, my muscles tightened and I was red with anger. I felt like giving this man a punch at his face too but I gave a second thought knowing that this would take a different dimension. I relaxed my muscles and came closer to the boy and gave him my hand to sit up. “Don’t do that again, it is too dangerous for you,” I told him. The boy looked at me and I could read the pain behind his look, he sobbed even more when I left him. I curse the man who did this but I also blame the parents of the boy for not taking care of him. 

In the restaurant, I saw this small boy who has been trying to get his hands on the leftover food but the big boys could not allow him get one. He looked fragile and one could count his ribs, judging by his looks, the boy might be 10 or 11 years old. I called him to come and sit next to me and ordered for him a plate of food, he ate quietly. After taking a few lumps of food, I started the conversation with him; at first he seemed hesitant to talk but he opened up to me when he realized that I was his friend. I learned that the boy lives with one of his uncles in the “town” and his mother lives in the village. The boy talked excitingly to me and he told me his names and that of his mother, where he came from and why he ended up on the street with other boys.  Deng, (not real name) left his mother in the village and came to town to live with his uncle, according to him, his mother told him about his dad who is in the army. “My mother said that my dad is a soldier and he has been away for over five years now,” he said while looking at me timidly. This suggests that the boy has no idea where is father is or how his dad looks like. The father might be a soldier or maybe the mother said this to cover up the true story to the boy. I told him to go back to his mother and his siblings in the village and leave the town, he seemed not convenience with my persuasion but I conveyed my message anyway. He walked away very excited and joined his friends who were sitting around doing their different businesses, he picked up the conversation with them and immediately got absorb into the group, and he looked not bothered about my words.

The following things should be done in order to stop this influx of children to the streets. First of all, the parents should take it upon themselves to care for their children and make sure that they are not the victim of peer influences. They must provide all the necessary basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and education as well as protecting them from anything that can endanger their lives and above all parental care/guidance is paramount. Secondly, the government should make it a law that whoever has a child on the street face a penalty and this should be done through family tracing because most of these children know where they come from and who their parents are. Fathers who abandon their children and wives and opt to stay in ‘towns’ should be given a fine; in other words, their salary should be cut and send to their children and wives in the villages. Thirdly, rural schools should be established and it should be made as a rule that every child must go to school and any parents whose children are not in school should be given a punishment. Lastly but not less, the women/mothers should be emancipated, given/showed their rights to know when to give birth. Some of them find themselves giving birth even when they are not so much willing to do so, lack of education make them think that giving birth is the only role they were created for. Child spacing and family planning are the fundamentals things in bringing up a quality and a happy family.

It is so sad that when we talk of women’s rights, child spacing or family planning, people flare up with anger even those who are called “elite class” can give you their long lectures citing books from their high schools to universities in support of giving birth to a quantity of children rather than the quality of children. It doesn't matter how many children you have, so long as you can cater for their well-being, schools, medical care and food. You can have your 100-200 children so long as you have the capacity to meet their basic rights (no stealing of public funds of course to feed your 1000 children). In fact, the ordinary members of the society including those who claimed to have read books will see you as an outsider or think that you are a lunatic when it comes to issues of reproduction. However, we should know that these children were brought into this world by us and we should look after them. It is not the fault of these children to find themselves in this cruel world, but we brought them here. It is therefore our moral obligation to care, protect and bring them up in a good and in a just manner. Some of these children would be the lawyers, doctors, engineers, ministers, presidents or any other leader if they are being cared for but their dreams are totally buried not because they decide to choose that life but the situation forced them.

Let’s make the future of our children brighter, have a blessed year 2015.