Street kids Dodoma’s big test

Dodoma. “As they were walking along the road, someone said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” The holl Bible reads in part, in Luke 9: 57-58.

While most big cities are decorated by flowers, gardens and spendid multi-storey structures, the streets in the town that is destined to become the headquarters of the Tanzanian government hosts hundreds of street children who have no place to call home; neither permanent places or roofs above their heads.

The motto for them is ‘Survival of the fittest need to be strong survive; ‘come rain, come thunder’. They wonder around the streets looking for daily bread by any possible means, irrespective of their age and gender.

When dusk sets in, one sees at various locations of the streets, hapless homeless children roaming around bars and restaurants searching for whatever can fill their empty stomachs before heading to their ‘homes’ located under bridges and other inhopsitable places, to retire for the night, and at least partial protection from cold nights.

During the night, while many people are enjoying sweet dreams in their expensive beds, life among these children is never safe as they would frequently encounter various ordeals, including rape and playing hide-and-seek with police officers.

The crack of dawn heralds the challenge of how they would survive throughout the day. To cushion frustrations, they often smoke cigarettes and bhang and sniff glue. This is part of their miserable lives. They constitute a battalion of a desperate copmmunity, as products of poor parenting, divorces and poverty, to mention but a few.

Given the tough lives they lead, the marginalized group also resorts to crude means of making ends meet, including pickpocketing in broad daylight, for they have to survive, by buying a little food and some basic necessities. but they spend part of their money on buying bhang, in order to get a bit of relief from the agony of a tough life.

A homeless child, twelve-year-old Joel Kiweli, narrates: “No one is there to take care for me. My father divorced my mother some three years ago and married another woman, a step mother who made life hell for me and my siblings. We went to school on empty stomachs, and when we returned home, there was no food reserved for us, but were forced to do tough work instead. I, and my younger sister, Anna, who is aged 7, decided to become a street children.” He elaborated that they made the tough but in the circumstances inevitable decision, after serching for their mother in vain.

Joel further narrated: “Sympathetic neighbors got tired of helping us. They told us that our mother was married to another man in Arusha, but it wasn’t easy to trace her.”

People who go to markets or shops have to be extra-cafeful as well as vigilant, as the street children pose big problems. They move around, eager to spot something to snatch, including wallets and handbags. They also pester people with enquiries on errands they can undertake in exchange for a little pay, such as carrying shopping bags to parked vehicles. But if those who assign them the errands have to be watchful; otherwise, some of their money or items end up being stolen. Vigilance is something people have learnt to pursue.

The regional social welfare officer, Ms Anna Gelle, told The Citizen in a recent interview here: “It’s a major challenge that we are still working round the clock to address the vice before the government fully commences its operation here. Most of these children come from Kizota, Mbuyuni and Majengo streets within the municipality and they are a big threat for many citizens here,” . She added that most of the children are prone to HIV/Aids infections as they are frequently being raped by thugs and that sometime they rape one another in their rough ‘homes’.

Ms Gelle said spirited efforts by authorities here, in conjunction with the police force to remove the children from the streets have so far been futile. “We have made several intervention, including counseling and taking them to daycare centers, but most of them escape and return to the streets,” she said.

She said the major challenge is the fact that majority of the children have already become addicted to bhang as well as glue sniffing, and therefore can longer settle day care centres, where they can’t get the items.

“Sometimes in the recent past, we undertook a special campaign with support from some Non-Governmental Organizations(NGOs) that target to take them to care centers. We managed to pick many of them, but after a few hours they fled back to the streets. They aren’t comfortable elsewhere.” she said further.

Ms Gelle cited poor parenting as one of the major problems: “Most studies here have established that poor parenting in many families is a big problem, especially the ones with small income; some children have been forced out of their homes due to their parents being rabid drunkards. Some were in school, but later dropped out after missing basic needs like food and clothes,” she said.

Situated at the country’s midpoint, Dodoma municipality serves as a junction for many lorries crossing here while on the way to different regions as long as some neighbouring countries. It is believed that, some of these children are the products of unsafe sexual intercourse between drivers and local sexual workers.

Presently, according to statistics at the regional commissioner’s office, Dodoma municipality is home to at least 840 orphans and vulnerable children that are presently under care of 16 Childcare Centers. “These are children whose parents have died due to the HIV/Aids pandemic, and there are those that have stepped into vulnerability due to deep-rooted poverty at their homes,” she explained.

She added that despite a playing major role at assisting the hapless orphans, most of centers are facing dire financial constraints, the government stopped to allocate subsidies to the, since the 1980s.

According to her, the other big challenge is the fact that most of the children in the centres would never wish to go back to their respective homes after clocking their exit stages. “As per the centers’ regulations, after a child reaches 18 years, he/she must be linked back to their respective parents. But most of them refuse to do so,” Ms Gelle said. She pointed out, however, there were exceptions of those who had made it to universities and vocational training colleges and were now leading decent livelihoods.

As different experts and authorities here lan how best to prepare the town ahead of the government relocation, it ends