Street boys face dangers of country unrest, forced to become soldiers
Child Soldier.
A pairing of words that should never exist.
But it does. In Africa, we have seen it in Sierra Leone. We have seen it in Sudan. We have seen it in Uganda. We will see it in Kenya.
Unless we choose to act now.
While I was in Kenya this August, I watched the nightly news in Kiswahili, then the same broadcast again in English. What I saw couldn’t have disturbed me more.
Reports acknowledged the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.
The very terrorist, Fazul, who had committed this atrocious act returned. This time he was discovered before he could execute his next act of destruction.
While Fazul fled to escape government authority, his mere presence in the nation rallied rebels together. Small militant groups began to rise up.
But where would they get the manpower?
Enter the Kenyan street boy.
When a child survives by sniffing glue to stave off hunger pangs and sleeps on the steps of a storefront, the option of joining a militant group to receive proper shelter and food becomes understandably appealing.
Since children in Kenya cannot legally work until the age of 18, many boys survive by working odd jobs and doing whatever they can for many. While the younger kids can beg, the older boys trade in scrap metal, wash cars, clean toilets and remove trash from local businesses.
Once these tasks are completed, the boys are only given a very small fee in exchange for their labor. Because no one is monitoring this, the street kids are often taken advantage of and grossly underpaid.
If any money is made, the boy can purchase lunch. But then he’ll be hungry again by dinner. Instead, he uses the money to purchase stick-tight-bond shoemakers’ glue.
Although this is illegal, shoemakers will sell a cup of glue to any child for as little as 10 shillings.
Storing the glue in an old plastic bottle, the child can make an O-shape with his mouth, secure his lips around the bottle opening and deeply inhale. The fumes from the glue dry out the mouth and burn down the throat. This feeling is comforting to a street boy. It signifies the assurance that he will get high off the glue. Once high, he will not feel his hunger pains for days.
Trapped in this vicious cycle, a street boy finds it impossible to resist any offer of food and shelter. Even if it comes from a man who will put a gun in a 7-year-old’s hands, brainwash and train him to pull the trigger against his own people.
The situation seems hopeless. However, this does not have to happen. If only we act to prevent the possibility of child soldiers now.
How? Build a home. With a boys’ home in place, many kids will be removed from the streets and given food, shelter, rehabilitation and an education.
These boys should not have to face the possibility, much less the reality, of becoming child soldiers.
They don’t have to. Someone else just has to help them first.
For more information, e-mail Project 58: Illuminating Injustice at unrproject58@gmail.com.
Ally Patton is a columnist for The Nevada Sagebrush. She can be reached at apatton@nevadasagebrush.com.
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 11:13 pm and is filed under Perspectives.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Print this post
Email this post© 2008 The Nevada Sagebrush
