It has been a big week at our Interim Care Centre for former street children, as after a long wait during which time we have been sorting out several children from the previous cohort for whom it has been very difficult to find suitable schools, 17 new boys arrived on Wednesday. There are about 8 more to come from an area on the outskirts of Thika, Makongeni, but they will come early next week. Wednesday morning was street recruitment in Thika Town itself, which meant a small group of us assembling in the middle of town at 6.30am (accompanied by Matt Oldfield, a photographer visiting us for a week on behalf of the Vodafone Foundation to help capture our work in action. Photos will be coming soon I hope!) and spreading out to find and talk to as many of the street children as possible. We picked an early time as we wanted to identify those who sleep on the street, rather than ‘day street children’ who have a place to sleep, albeit usually very basic, but who work or beg on the street during the day in the search of money and/or food. The two groups are both extremely vulnerable, but for the ICC, we focus on children whose entire life is conducted on the street, which makes them the more consistently vulnerable group. We tracked down 9 children, who our staff have been talking with for the past few months in preparation for recruitment, and had long conversations with many more, fortunately while they were still conherent, pre-glue sniffing.
We then jumped on a bus and went to Ruiru, a town about 20 minutes from Thika where there is a large number of street children, and so began the second stage of recruitment. This time it was easier as AfCiC’s outreach staff had already identified the children during their weekly outreach workshops in Ruiru, so it was a matter of rounding them up, with the aid of a football and an acrobatics instructor(!), double-checking they still wanted to come to ICC, and unlike with the Thika children, for whom we still have to find out about their backgrounds, getting parental consent from a few of their parents who are around but currently incapable of supporting their child/ren.
So, by late Wednesday afternoon we had 17 new boys, and the ICC compound was covered in boys asleep on the grass, as most of them had probably not rested properly, i.e. without fear or hunger disturbing their sleep, in a very long time. After washing and re-dressing in more decent clothing, they each were allocated a bed and a blanket, and finally (they were very impatient understandably!) we all ate together. After introductions and a few ground rules, it was bedtime, and I was glad to know that 17 more children than usual had a safe place to sleep that night… soon to be 25… and so the aim is that, with a lot of hard work and commitment, 25 children would be back in school by the end of this year, and able to plan their future rather than the endless struggle for daily survival, and if possible, their families will be in a more stable position, through microfinance loans and skills training.
