Life of street-children in Dar-es-Salaam

Artikel was published in the Daily News, Da- es-Salaam, 1995
By: Nasrin Siege and Leddah Mndeme

"My father took us away from our mother from Moshi and stayed with us at Tabora." H., twelve years old, tells. "When our grandfather saw that our father did not take enough care of us, he took us with him. But after sometime our grandfather passed away. Our father took us again and married another woman. She had her own children and she used to mistreat us very much. She didn't like to give us food. When we were eating, she used to pour our food. One day, when my father came home, he saw how she was mistreating us. He sent that mother and her children away and later on he sent us away, too. We went to our relatives. But they also mistreated us, saying that they did not have enough money to take care of us. So, thats why we decided to come to town."

H. is one of the children who live in the streets of DSM. But since he came to "Dogo Dogo Centre" life has changed for him. He sleeps, eats, plays at the Centre and he is going to school since July 1994. After school H. comes home (Centre), gets his lunch, does his home-work and goes for car-washing in the street, to earn some little money. His teachers say, that H. is an intelligent boy. He is doing very well at school. H. is happy now, but, when he thinks about his real home, he becomes sad.

What happened to him? Why did he become a street-child?
His story shows us some of the main reasons why children leave their homes:

1. The parents get divorced and

2. The new partner of the father or mother does not accept the children from the former father or mother. He or she starts to abuse them physically.

3. Nobody else takes the responsibility to help the child, unlike in the past when the traditional families did so.

4. The only person, who wanted to help in H's case, the grandfather, died unfortunately.

5. Poverty: the relatives of H. didn't help, because they themselves were poor.

6. The contact with the real mother gets lost.

H. says, that he would have liked to go to his mother. But he didn't know where to find her. Now, H. was left alone. He felt lost and he decided to live in the street.

Lack of Love, mistreatment, loosing the confidence in parents, relatives and other adults were the reasons why H. preferred the life in the street instead of staying at home.

Each child at the centre has his own story. Each story shows what hard life this children had, since they were born. And one must ask, how they could survive up to now. There are many reasons which make them to become street-children. In H. case we could explain some of the reasons as mentioned earlier. There are other reasons too. These are:

7. Children who have lost their parents through AIDS.

8. Street-families: Nowadays adult beggars are coming together with their children to town. Some of their children are born in the streets.

9. Drug-abusing parents, who become violent towards their children.
They use most of their money for drugs and they don't take care of their families.

Some people say, that one reason for children to live in the street, is looking for adventures. We don't believe that. No child likes to live in the street. If a child has got people who love him, who don`t beat him, and who satisfy his basic needs, he will never run away from home.

Life in the street means to be hungry, to become sick, not to be loved, to be hated, to be chased by others, to be abused and to be involved in criminal activities, which is dangerous for them.

Our work at "Dogo Dogo Centre" started in October 1993. H. was one of the first boys, who came to us. Since he is going to school, he is much happier than before. He has realised, that the people at the Centre are really helping him.

But there are other children, who have completely lost their confidence in adults. Like the one boy who was burned severely when he was a very small child. His arms and his hands are burned, he has no fingers anymore. He comes only sometimes to our Centre. He cannot believe that there are people who want really to help him.

H. has got some help. But how can we help all the other children who are still in the streets?

Dar-es-Salaam has more than 3500 street-children, and the number is increasing every day. At the Centre we can see this development aswell. Every day new boys are coming to us, looking for help.
When the "Dogo Dogo Centre" started with its work, it started with only eighteen children. The idea was, to work with only thirty-five children due to limited space. To give shelter for fifteen and twenty "drop-in". But soon the Centre realised that much more children were coming for help.

One year after opening the Centre some days more than eighty-five children are getting help. Seven other centres are working in the same area with street-children in DSM.

We have now started to help and we should not wait and waste our time until we get a similar situation like in Nairobi, where more then 20 000 children are living in the streets. In August/September 1994 we read about the killing of street children in Nairobi by the police. We should not allow us to endup in a similar situation.

These are our children and we are all responsible for their future.
Their future is our future. If we loose these children we will get lost ourselves.

Most of these children are intelligent and creative.

If we help them to develop their intelligence, we will help our country to develop.

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