It is pouring rain. A driving rain which sends sheets of water sideways. The kind that soaks immediately.
It is in this rain that we find about a dozen children and teenagers gathered under a blue tarp for shelter. They have nowhere else to go. They live and sleep on the streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Each boy has his own story of heartbreak.
Twelve-year-old Abdul Samkoh and two other young boys are crouched in the mud, washing dishes in a tin tub. Abdul says he has been on the streets for one year, since his mother died. His father, he says, is back in the village.
He says he and the other boys are suffering because there is no food; they are subjected to disease and sometimes people take advantage of them, especially police and people who are older. He says there is no way to live, except to find garbage and wash dishes. He sleeps outside in a market area and says simply he doesn’t get enough food.
Next to him is Abubakarra Jalloh, who is also 12. He is shirtless, shoeless and says he has been on the streets for nine long years since being separated from his family.
The third boy says his family passed away and his biggest wish is to go to school.
The three boys have now washed all the dishes and have earned enough money to share one plate of rice. They dig in, hungrily, with their hands and all too soon, the little food there was – is gone. All three look around in defeat. Clearly it was not enough.
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There is another boy, this one 14, who isn’t eating. He sits off to the side, very still. He is sick, he says. Every part of his body aches and he is scared. He is only surviving through the help of the other boys.
There are too many of these stories to tell. Street Child has done a survey, to find out just how extensive the problem of street kids is in Sierra Leone and the result surprised them. They found there are 49,698 children in the country who rely on the streets for their survival.
This in a country of just six million people. Street Child’s country director Emmanuel Kelfa Kargbo says now that they know the number, they can change their approach to the problem. He says they are working with a network of organizations to try and reach all of the kids. Their goal is, that within three years, they will have 500 workers on the streets to try to provide all the children with a safe adult in their lives. Right now, he says, the children are often exploited by people who promise them food.
Street Child’s survey found 1,800 of the girls on the streets were working in the commercial sex industry. Another disturbing number is that 4,388 of the children they counted on the streets were under six years old. As well, 2,699 of the kids had nowhere to sleep at night.
There is one more figure which struck me. When we interviewed several children begging in downtown Freetown, they told us they typically manage to get the equivalent of 50 cents to a dollar a day. Some of them take that money home for the whole family to survive on.
Mohamed Bangura, 12, says his mother is very sick, and that he takes the money home to her so she can buy rice.
What struck me the most, about all of the kids we talked to, is that they still have a sense of hope. They believe that life will turn around for them. One 14-year-old who sleeps on the street says he just wants to live a meaningful life like anyone else in a civil way. He wants to have a good, professional job. One nine-year-old aimed high with all the exuberance of a little boy, saying one day he would like to be president. But for now that is the stuff of dreams, with the real-life priority of just getting enough food consuming their every thought.
Christina is a Global National correspondent based in Toronto. She is currently reporting from Freetown. Follow her on Twitter: @StevensGlobal.
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