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Young
and Homeless Fill Africa's City Streets
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The morning call to prayer echoed through the city
as Ahmed Abdulraham, 14, a small boy with cloudy, yellowing eyes, rose
from his version of a mattress: a pile of trash spread across a gutter.
He rubbed some murky brown water over his face. He prostrated himself
and prayed, he said, for a day when he would be safe and earn a lot of
money. Then he took turns with his five friends sniffing glue.
After they got high, the boys took off across a rocky escarpment on the
recent morning, over some aging train tracks and into the choking traffic
of downtown Khartoum. They were ready to work.
Ahmed, known in local slang as a "mouse," is one of an estimated
35,000 minors who live and work on the streets of this dusty capital city.
Some, like him, have been here less than a year, since fleeing the Darfur
conflict in the west. But most are runaways from rural poverty, forced
to support their families or orphaned by AIDS.
They are part of an unprecedented and growing phenomenon of homeless youths
in Africa's exploding urban centers, according to studies by UNICEF and
Save the Children. There is no reliable estimate of their total number,
but studies indicate it could be as high as 1 million.
Africa once prided itself on its traditional systems of extended family,
which sheltered children even in dire circumstances. But over the past
25 years, a variety of problems -- including drought, wars, AIDS and economic
collapse -- have broken families apart and left hundreds of thousands
of children to survive on their own.
The problem first became noticeable in the 1980s, when coffee prices crashed
and Western subsidies undercut other export crops such as corn and cotton,
according to studies by Street Child Africa, a British organization. Many
children in large rural families were asked to go out and earn money or
simply left home.
Over the past decade, as the AIDS pandemic combined with other regional
problems, more and more young Africans had to forgo childhood and school,
which is not free in many African countries. More than half the youths
interviewed by Save the Children said the inability to pay school fees
forced them into the streets.
There, they encountered a tough, adult environment where they were vulnerable
to drug addiction, bullying, sexual abuse and devastating health conditions,
according to child rights advocates.
Now, nearly every major African city has its own name for them. In Khartoum,
they are called "the children of the market." In Nairobi, they
are known as "glue boys," because they sniff glue out of old
bottles, holding the rims to their lips as if they were whispering into
the neck. In Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, they are called "the
desperate children" -- barefoot boys who shine shoes, banging a stick
with a bottle cap to attract customers.
"Never before have we seen this many children living on the streets.
Part of the problem is that urbanization across Africa is pushing these
children into very chaotic settings," said Nassirin Dafallea El Hag
Yousf, program officer for Save the Children-Sweden in Khartoum, which
studied 500 street children in 2001.
When many of them leave home, Yousf said, "they intend on making
an honest living by working, but they end up in trouble, addicted to glue,
sometimes sexually abused or exploited by adults. Not all of these kids
are bad. But it's a huge problem for Africa. And it can't be ignored.
These sweet young boys will one day be men."
Out on the street, Ahmed started to panhandle. He tugged on women's skirts.
He pulled on men's sleeves. Block after block, people ignored him or gave
him amused but irritated looks.
He ran up to a heavy-set, well-dressed woman and grasped her hand, using
a technique his friends had taught him: "Get them to look into your
eyes and look very sad." When that didn't work, he sang her a song
about the beauty of Sudanese flowers. He stretched out his hand and pleaded:
"Please, mama, hungry. I love you too much. I am hungry too much.
Please, money."
After a while he gave up, reached into a trash can and picked up a half-eaten
apple. He shared it with his friend, Fecil Khmis, 16.
Later on, the boys approached a friendly merchant, who handed them a tray
of old rice, half-eaten bread, and some fat and bone from a grilled lamb.
They sat down in a shady spot and ate the scraps.
Ahmed has been in Khartoum for months, living by his wits and keeping
company with other homeless boys. His skin is infected because he has
little chance to wash. He often appears sleepy or disoriented from the
effects of glue. He has few defenses against the elements, or against
older boys and adults who pressure him for money.
A homeless man wandered over. Drunk and aggressive, he demanded some coins
Ahmed had begged and began slapping him on the head. A crowd gathered.
Ahmed started crying and handed over his earnings.
"There is freedom on the street," he said as he hobbled away,
looking disturbed. "It's not a good life, though. Your stomach is
always biting. You have few places to sleep at nightfall. You lack the
love of parents. It's a dangerous life."
Ahmed said his childhood back in Darfur was "normal." His parents
were farmers. He had five brothers and sisters and he went to school,
where his favorite subjects were Arabic and math.
When war broke out about two years ago, their village was attacked and
bombarded, he said. In the chaos, Ahmed said, he became separated from
his family and ran after some neighbors to safety. He lived for a few
days in a camp but didn't want to stay there alone.
"I heard some other boys were coming to Khartoum by sneaking on trucks.
I joined them," he said. "At first I liked it because eating
from the rubbish is better than living in the camps, where the food has
no taste -- just wheat and oils."
Ahmed has not seen or heard of his family since the day he fled his village.
He said he missed his father but tried to "forget his memories of
back then. I have a new life now." Ahmed's new family consists of
a few boys he met on the streets. One is Fecil, who has been here much
longer than Ahmed. He left southern Sudan about six years ago, when a
north-south civil war was raging. At first, he lived with his family in
a camp near Khartoum for people displaced by the war. But his father was
unable to find steady work and there was no money. So Fecil came to the
city.
"I kept asking my family for money, but my family had none,"
he said. "I might as well do something for myself." Sometimes
he visits his family in the camp, but he said he never stays long because
he doesn't like his father's rules.
Ahmed and his friends survive through a combination of odd jobs, petty
theft and charity. They carry heavy objects for merchants, sweep their
shops or wash their cars for a few coins. They hang around food stalls,
hoping for handouts. They steal scrap metal to sell and poke through trash
bins for leftover food.
To distract themselves from the tedium and hardship of street life, they
sniff glue, soaking it into pieces of cloth that they hide up their sleeves.
They also gamble on a game of skill called om assach , tossing and catching
small stones with one hand. But the glue is both addictive and toxic,
and om assach can get rough because older boys often force younger winners
to pay a tax.
They also love to see Bollywood movies from India, and they spend hours
in 10-cent movie houses, evading the afternoon heat and watching four-hour
epics filled with music, romance and human triumph over desperate odds.
"I like those films so much," said Ahmed, who wears torn and
taped plastic sandals. "The stories make me feel happy."
A line of dirty, barefoot boys waited outside a shelter called Sabah.
More than 200 have appeared at the door this year, according to the director,
Khalaf Allahismail. He tries to work with the government to get the boys
off the street, off glue and into classes and part-time jobs.
"The first time I saw children eating from the garbage, it was shocking.
It was this new phenomenon in Africa to have so many children surviving
like this," said Allahismail, 57, who quit his job as a government
social worker and started Sabah in 1986. "Suddenly, farming wasn't
profitable enough, and then wars were raging and AIDS came all at once.
Now, the issue is complicated by Darfur, and we are seeing more children
arrive here traumatized and orphaned."
The street boys are seen as shameful in Sudanese society. When they begin
to fight with each other, it gives the police an excuse to arrest them.
One recent day, a police officer chased after Ahmed and his friends, calling
out, "Don't tarnish the name of Sudan. You have to reform yourself."
The government has also instituted what it calls "public order campaigns,"
rounding up street children and putting them in shelters. The boys say
they dislike the shelters because often they are beaten or abused for
resisting strict discipline.
But at Sabah, street children seem to find a warmer welcome. They are
allowed to use a clean toilet and shower in privacy, a rare luxury, and
the counselors patiently listen to their problems.
On a recent day, Amad Adel, 13, an emaciated boy with huge brown eyes
and no shoes, told a counselor how much he wanted a life away from the
streets.
Amad's mother was killed during a robbery three years ago. Soon after,
his father remarried. His stepmother decided she would pay to send her
four children to school, but not Amad. Frustrated, he ran away to Khartoum,
stealing car mirrors to pay for his bus ticket.
On the streets, he linked up with some other boys and started sniffing
glue. To support his habit, he said, he stole car parts, trading them
with mechanics for glue or cash. The first time he inhaled glue, he felt
a sharp pain around his eyebrows. Then he thought he might pass out.
"I got scared that I would die and be punished for all my thieving,"
he told the counselor, Nwadar Eltaab, 30, a soft-spoken woman. He said
he came to Sabah in part because of guilt, and in part because he had
heard he could wash in private.
"There is something so good in him," Eltaab said, looking at
Amad as he smiled back and fidgeted in his chair. When he spoke, he addressed
her as "madam" and used formal Arabic. "These children
look scary and society has written them off," she said. "But
many are at the age where they need us to step in."
Eltaab invited Amad to live at the shelter but warned him he would not
be allowed to use glue. With a sweet smile, Amad admitted that would be
difficult.
"When I do glue, it makes my imagination so good. I have no anxiety
or pain. I imagine myself in a big comfortable house," he said. "I
have money and all the kids around me have plates of food, warm tea and
new clothes."
By Emily Wax, Washington Post
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