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CHILDREN
Rehabilitating and reintegrating street children back into society
Kinshasa’s street children are known as «Shégués» (i.e. «street children») and they’re a headache for the city authorities. They can be seen in all the strategic areas of town: the Central Market, the Martyrs’ Stadium, Victory Square, Matonge, 30th June Boulevard, near the central post office, around the Gamebla, Simba Zikida and Wenze ya Bayaka markets. The kids are always on the move ready for anything — bad and good. They come from various backgrounds: children from divorced parents, orphans, children displaced because of war, children suspected of witchcraft and rejected by their families. The Ministry of Social Affairs and the Family says there could be more than 20,000 of these children — a real army of excluded, delinquent street children.
Scandals on the streets
These «children», aged from three to thirty, of both sexes, sleep in the open. They’re responsible for any number of petty crimes — stealing, shop-lifting, mugging peaceful citizens especially women. They’re always ready to give you a hand — for a fee. And when there’s a hullabaloo on the streets you can be sure the street kids are there, ready to snatch what’s available.
They act as prostitutes in broad daylight, not caring about the police. Girls, under ten years of age, offer themselves to men for less than fifty or one hundred Congolese francs (Euros 0,15 or Euros 0.30) provided «the fee» is high enough so they can buy a cassava cake or a loaf of bread. The street children pretend they can cast spells on their victims and are fully prepared to show their mates how to do the same.
Here’s an example of a one such street «incident» which turned to disaster. On 15 August 2001, because a «shégué» couldn’t get a cup of tea and piece of bread from a woman in the Central Market cafeteria, he overturned a boiling tea urn over her, causing first degree burns. This resulted in a series of other «incidents», ending in the «shégué’s death and the market and nearby shops ransacked. The Press described the ev-ents as the «Kinshasa street childrens’ riots», sparked by the killing of a boy seen stealing (cfr: ANB-BIA, number 421, page V).
Mr Christophe Muzungu is a former governor of Kinshasa. Together with the city authorities, he launched a plan called: «Kanga Vagabonds» (i.e. «Stop the Vagrants»). The aim is to rehabilitate and reintegrate the street children back into normal society. Temporary shelters are provided but these are not permanent homes; rather, halfway houses for the young people while waiting for an opportunity to get the children back with their own families. Efforts are made to find host families for those young people who don’t have a family. NGO‘s and international organisations such as UNICEF support the project.
Training and reintegration
So that the «Kanga Vagabonds» project can be a real success, UNICEF works with the Social Affairs Ministry in finding appropriate sites for the reception centres. UNICEF also provides practical support in two such centres: Pekabo for boys (run by the NGO, Help for Underprivileged Children); and another home for girls, run by Social Action for Children in Distress.
Financial help is given to enable the NGO‘s concerned to trace the childrens’ families; to see how the land lies vis à vis the families (i.e. are they willing to have their children home again); to provide ways and means of reuniting the children with their families whenever possible; to lodge the children in the centres; (supplying blankets, kerosene lamps, plates, beakers, waterbuckets, mosquito nets, clothing); to ensure basic health-care by contributing essential medicines; to support the informal education unit and to provide instruction in (especially for the girls) hairdressing, sewing and catering.
On the occasion of the International Day for the Er-adication of Poverty, UNICEF, Social Action for Children in Distress, the Ministry of Social Affairs and representatives from Kinshasa’s city hall, presided over a ceremony in which some street children were re-united with their families. A dozen girls, including an eighteen-year-old (the eldest) who’d had a baby while she was «on the streets», were able to return home. The occasion was both moving and joyful. People were reminded of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel.
The «Blue Schools»
Marie Mama wa Bosawa parish is situated in Kimbanseke District. On 23 October 2001, Mrs Jeanne Eb-amba, Minister for Social Affairs, officially inaugurated the 2001-2002 school year for street children and other under-privileged children. Last year, some 4,000 children registered in these schools, called «Blue Schools» or «Second Chance Schools».
Unfortunately, due to accommodation and catering difficulties, it is not possible to help all the children, and several returned to street life. This year, the number of training centres has increased from ten to twenty; at the same time the number of qualified personnel has been augmented. The long-term aim is to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of marginalised children have access to education.
In the Mbenseke Mfutu Valley on the outskirts of Kinshasa, there’s an agricultural encampment called «Gbanela City» or «City of Joy» which takes care of a few street children. This encampment has four tents arranged in a semi-circle and in the middle, a waterproof tarpaulin attached to poles, providing extra shelter. The «farm» consists of some fields and a small stream running through them. Fourteen farmers cultivate about nine hectares of land and grow groundnuts, maize, garden produce. They’ve already sold lots of firewood. Ten street children living in the encampment are looked after by the Organisation for Rehabilitating and Protecting Street Children (ORPER) and the Organisation for Providing Education and Protection (OSEPER). The young people are supervised by four teachers one of whom is an agricultural engineer.
Congo RDC‘s government wants to find suitable solutions in order to provide training and follow-up for the street children, especially in Kinshasa. Instead of the usual public awareness campaigns, reflection days and marches which would take a lot of time and drain meagre resources, realistic short or long-term policies should be put forward for rehabilitating and reintegrating the street children. The Government and international NGOs seem to have understood this and latched on to the idea. But major resources are needed to rid the streets of so many excluded and vagrant children.
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