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LIVING ON THE streets of Nairobi, a child does not remain a child for very long.
Having either left or been forced out of their family homes, the city’s street boys are vulnerable to its many dangers. All are victims of violence, many are sexually abused and most are addicted to drugs.
When TheJournal.ie, along with Trócaire, visited the Kwetu Home of Peace rehabilitation centre for street children, 23 new boys had just been taken in the week before.
Aged between eight and 13, the boys learn, for the first month, simple things like washing themselves and their clothes, eating together at a table and just generally living with other people.
“These kids, they are always fighting because on the streets, it’s about survival and the strongest survives,” director Sister Angela Odhiambo said.
The name here was chosen deliberately, to help the boys feel at home. Kwetu means ‘ours’, so it’s ‘our home of peace’. The boys need to feel that it is their home, that they belong. Peace is important because on the streets and where they have come from in their homes, there’s a lot of challenges, a lot of violence and so on.
Alone in the world
There are a number of reasons these boys ended up on the streets of Nairobi. For most of them it is related to poverty.
“There’s no food, they don’t go to school and maybe their parent’s own life is messed up and they don’t take responsibility for the child. So the child finds himself alone in the world and he decides to go to the streets to fend for himself. Sometimes they go because they are trying to support the parents – especially if there are other siblings – so he becomes like a breadwinner.”
Sometimes the mother in a family dies and the father decides he does not want the boy to stay, so he forces him out. Tragically, Sister Angela explained some of the children were abandoned by aunts or other family members in the city after both their parents passed away.
Staff from Kwetu go out into the streets of Nairobi where the boys live in groups to try to enrol them in the rehabilitation programme.
“We try to convince them that they do not have to end up being thugs. Right now they are small, they do not very harmful things like stealing and adults get them to do things like carrying weapons, carrying drugs and so on.
But when they grow up, it’s a different story altogether. We tell them they don’t have to die like that.”
Eating from rubbish bins
The boys we met, who were just a week off the streets, eyed our media group curiously but suspiciously. They talked loudly with each other and played like other children, but they all looked old and tired.
One told us he used to eat from rubbish bins when he lived on the streets.
“I slept on the ground – here I sleep in a bed,” another told us.
When they first arrive at the centre, they have a lot of difficulties. Staff stay with them at all times to stop them fighting with one another, but also to win their trust and offer their support, counsel and kindness. These children have been through a lot.
Many cannot sleep at night when they first arrive, some suffer terrible withdrawal symptoms from the drugs they were using on the streets. Sister Angela said one of the new boys told them he was hearing voices at night.
Their drugs help them in many ways, it gives them the strength of being brave to do what they need to do. It also makes them numb, they don’t feel anything when they do what they need to do. It helps them not to feel hunger or not to feel cold, it helps them sleep.
Reuniting them with their families
Once they have settled in Kwetu they begin a kind of informal education and then move to another centre where their counselling continues but where they can begin to attend regular schools.
“This starts the process of integration. When they are in school, according to us this child has done well no matter what, because their lives were completely disrupted and they have been out of school and out of home and out of everything for a long time. So for them to come back and go to school and perform is a success - no matter what marks they get.”
Staff then start the process of trying to track down the child’s family. It can take some time for the boys to trust them enough to open up about where they came from.
“One of the things we want to know from them is who is alive and if there are people alive, where they are”.
It can be a painful process for all involved when a child is reunited with their family, but Sister Angela and her staff stay working with them for years after they are brought back together.
It is also costly for Sister Angela’s organisation, especially when staff have to travel all over the country to find families and reunite the children with them. Their work would be impossible without donations like those coming through Irish charity Trócaire.
Problems that first forced the children out like poverty, for example, can be tricky to solve.
Staff work with parents to help them form community groups that band together to save money and give soft loans to each other, like a mini credit union. This is an initiative NGOs across Kenya have been promoting – a way for communities to help themselves. They can use the money to start small businesses to help them put food on the table.
When we spoke with her, Sister Angela said they were struggling with the case of one child whose mother is also living on the streets and has serious addiction issues.
“She does drugs 24 hours and even when she comes here she is on drugs. She lives in a kind of makeshift house close to here and is in a very bad situation. But they like each other so much, they really love each other, they have this strange…connection with one another. So we don’t know what to do about this case right now.”
Pride
Though it can be a struggle to reunite children with their families, Kwetu gives all of them a second chance at a good life and there are some positive stories.
In December we integrated a child – very bright, really gifted, very nice. His mother is on the streets and he was doing very well in school. We could not put him back with her so after a long search we got an aunty. Then we negotiated between the mother and aunty. So we have put him in a boarding school and he goes home on holidays for a short time.
One boy went all the way through high school and is now working at the Kwetu home. Sister Angela said the young boys who arrive do not believe him when he first tells them he was like them once. Having him around serves as an inspiration to the others.
And another boy, now fully grown, did so well in high school that he is attending one of the best universities in the country. While he studies, he is living with his mother in Kibera, the city’s largest slum.
“We are very proud of him,” sister Angela told us, beaming with pride. “That gets me out of bed in the morning.”
Last month Trócaire launched its ‘Fight for Justice’ Lent campaign. The money the charity raises will go towards supporting initiatives like Sister Angela’s home of peace.
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Interesting stats there. in my last lab I was one of 2 guys but there was 10 women
Happy days! :)
Are you working in a biology-related field? If not, that’s very unusual!
Would I be right in saying that a groundbreaking project could not receive funding because it is spearheaded by a man. This positive discrimination, gender quotas and the like are stopping the best person available person for a job, reserch grant etc from getting it.
Imagine the reaction if this was a male only grant.
couldnt agree more.
Any initiative of such importance would be supported
There are countless grants available for men. If a male scientist proposes a project of any merit, it will get funded.
All this talk of ‘best man for the job’ amuses me, as if that’s what happens right now.
You are totally right, this is the world we live in today…
Hi Philib,
The problem is that the best ‘man’ for the job does not always get the job as..he is a she. There are a number of studies confirming gender bias in performance review in STEM and, also, there is a smaller pool to choose. as you know yourself, no doubt, the social and emplowment set-up in Ireland is not the friendliest towards working mothers or fathers who want to spend the first few months raising their child. this leads to a winnowing of the remaining women as they approach 30 odd years of age.
I’m a post-doc in the Netherlands in a STEM field. In a study here a few years ago, they also found that the amount of women in science was relatively poor. They instigated a number of funding initiatives to encourage women to enter, remain in or return to research post-family. It made economic sense-after all, what was the point of them being expensively educated by the state and system only to drive them out? It also prevevnts loss of talented candidates and onset of intellectual poverty. Google NUFFIC-it gives a good shake-down of the rationale forming policy here. It’s working-numbers are climbing.
I have yet to meet a male, Dutch scientist who complains that his chances for advancement are reduced by these initiatives or that less talented women are edging him out of funding. Perhaps they are not quite so insecure. Maybe they won’t say to me directly…who knows?
It’s not an initiative to shaft men, it’s meant to help women and add a bit of balance to the scene. To repeat-helping women to succeed in the face of bias does not mean preventing men from succeeding in a system already tilted in their favour.
Philib, here’s a couple of studies on gender bias in performance review-I can’t send a direct link, google the titles if you like.
Have wonderfull Wednesday All!
Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Corinne A. Moss-Racusina,b, John F. Dovidiob, Victoria L. Brescollc, Mark J. Grahama,d, and Jo Handelsman
Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters. By Ilana Yurkiewicz
The Impact of Gender on the Review of Curricula Vitae of Job Appplicants and Tenure Candidates; An Empirical Study. R.E. Steinpreis et al
Unless that research is from Ireland Sarah, it has limited efficacy.
I’d hold out for a job in Rehab tbh. Miles more money, bigger pension and you dont even have to worry about turning over a profit.
Dont worry Bazalini, that €175k is not their salary. That’s for all research costs including salary (and possibly even the salary for any assistants needed on the project). Id be willing to that bet that successful applicants would be lucky to draw a salary even near to €50k….so yeah that rehab job would definitely be a better shout!
Also, its funding for a project that otherwise may not have gotten funded, possibly because it is not “in vogue”. Funding discrimination based on what fields of research are in fashion is unfortunately is a fairly big problem academia, and that is before even getting into any gender discrimination issues. Ideally science should be conducted for science’s sake and the progression of knowledge, rather than for profits. I think this scheme should be welcomed.
+1
Sad to see the taxpayer paying for government gender politics rather than just science.
Research should not be about the genital assignment of the researchers, just the work & its outcomes.
I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately though, that’s not how it works. A man is far more likely to receive funding and a greater salary. What’s that, if not gender discrimination?
Defenders of the status quo are generally ignorant to how it operates, I’ve found.
“A man is far more likely to receive funding and a greater salary. What’s that, if not gender discrimination?”
Just because their may be an imbalance doesn’t make it discrimination. Equality is about equal opportunity, not equal numbers.
Seems a little weird to be encouraging women with Ph.D’s to remain in STEM fields. Seems very much to be preaching to the choir, women who hold a Ph.D. in a STEM field, really shouldn’t need extra encouragement to get into STEM.
I’m all for promoting women in science, we always need more scientists, but this needs to be done at the secondary and even primary school levels, not at the Ph.D. levels.
John,
What we really need is positions and more funding, (a boost in wages wouldn’t hurt either with post docs now starting on 32k) to encourage people to actually stay in science. The vast majority leave academia right after the PhD or within 5 years because it provides zero financial security and low prospects. Without a significant commercial research sector in Ireland most also leave research.
I’m a scientist in medical research, I get ignored and talked over a lot. I would imagine this happens to a lot of women researchers. More money for women scientists is a very good thing!
All the teachers in my local primary school/creche/secondary school are female, can I get a grant, cos I really need a job, and this discrimination against men is terrible.
Good old leftist social engineering. Just pay people to make up the numbers even if they have no interest in the subject. I hear the next project is to fund women to become professional snooker players.
@agent, did you actually read the article? It clearly states that prospective candidates need a PHD or MD. So they’re hardly picking random women who have no interest in STEM research.
Totally skewed approach for aligning equal gender representation in STEM. Grants should be awarded based on the quality and strength of the applicant and their proposal, not on their gender. Will the government be rolling out a similar, positive discrimination scheme for areas in which men are unrepresented?
Would you ever make valid points
Men and women have the exact same opportunities to study science in this country, instead why not offer grants to the best regardless of gender? That would do a lot more for science
As a product of the Irish education system I can tell you that men and women don’t have the same opportunities to study science and engineering. In secondary school; I was actively discouraged from taking subjects like metal work, chemistry and physics – sure why wouldn’t I want to do home edc instead? I studied Microbiology and biochemistry in college and while it was much better for me then in secondary school, friends of mine who studied chemistry and physics told me that some TAs and Lectures almost expected them to drop out at some stage.
It is an uphill struggle for woman to get into certain fields of science; let alone get a PHD in a subject and once they get there they often find it difficult to get grants.
Surely a job/grant/etc should be given based on merit not gender. I know there are far less women in the lab sciences, but surely the answer is to see why as opposed to anything else.
Positive discrimination strikes again!!
Women in the workplace. Bad idea.
Just mention Gerbil Worming [aka climate change] and you get double :-)
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