|
 By
Adrian E. Cristobal
Aldo, 5,
did not mean to trap his mother when he asked her if God
made everything, to which she answered, naturally, “Yes,
He did.”
“Why did
He make the poor?”
The boy
was on his way to school when another child, dirty and
sweating, thumped at the car’s windshield, his open palm
in a familiar gesture. The driver waved the beggar away.
Aldo’s
question will remain unanswered. In time, he will learn,
like most of us, that his is either a wrong or heretical
question. Adults, if they’re curious at all, seek for
the causes of poverty in economic and political
conditions, making up theories of development and
underdevelopment, and finally proposing various
solutions.
But
there is no theory, no explanation why children are
poor, why they are out in the streets. The common
explanation is that their parents are poor or they live
in a poor country. But even in rich countries, there are
poor children, children who live and work, when they
can, in the streets.
Nicole,
18, panhandles in the streets of Toronto, Canada. At
last count, there were 66,532 missing child reports in
2002, of which 52,390 were classified as runaways. A
study indicated that more than 70 percent leave home to
escape physical or sexual abuse. According to a
government report, many of these homeless youth survive
on a day-to-day basis by couch surfing or living in
overcrowded or unsuitable housing. (In the US, however,
poverty is not the main factor that pushes children out.
A majority of the estimated 750,000 to 1 million street
children have fled physical or sexual abuse.)
However,
Nicole is better off than Tanya, 14, of Harare, Zimbabwe
(her parents died of Aids-related diseases), who had to
take care of 10 siblings. She dreamt of going to school
and learning to speak English—“good English”—and already
speaking a bit of the language, was able to tell her
interviewer, “I’m a sister to many, a friend to a few,
and a ‘wife’ to some.”
Who are
these children?
According to some writers, it’s better to think of
street children in terms of their relationship to the
street. Some come from street families. Others live
mainly in the street but may go back to the family in
the evenings and make sporadic visits. Others sleep in
night shelters. And a proportion endure periods in jail
or institutions or spend their days working in open-air
markets.
Most are
working children.
Nobody
knows for sure how many they are. Anywhere from 30 to
170 million the world over, but that’s a guess: they are
not included in surveys and censuses. The only
statistics come from the numerous volunteer
organizations on the ground.
There
are some health and gender profiles. Health: in Toronto,
50 percent had chlamydia; in Cambodia, 40 percent have
HIV infections; in Guatemala; 50 percent had STDs, and
92 percent had lice, 88 percent contracted upper
respiratory infections due to exposure; skin infections
were also common. The irony is that in Guatemala as well
as Nepal, urban street children were in better health
than children in stable homes in farming villages, “an
indicator of the depths of rural poverty in these
countries rather than a recommendation for life in the
street.”
In the
case of gender, there are fewer girls than boys:
something between 3 percent and 30 percent of the
population. Girls, however, are more vulnerable to
violence, including sexual attacks (although this is a
problem for boys, too). Many are lured into brothels.
Unicef estimates that over two million children, mainly
girls, are exploited through the double P: prostitution
and pornography. A million and a half girls and boys are
trafficked every year.
Note
this: Countries which have the highest reported sexual
exploitation of girls are India, the US, Thailand,
Taiwan, Brazil and the Philippines.
Another
disturbing profile is the violence done to street
children. Here’s a finding two years ago by the New
Internationalist (the people, the ideas, the action in
the fight for global justice):
Law and
order officials and self-styled vigilantes both attempt
to “clean the street” of these children in many parts of
the world. In Latin America, the problem is particularly
acute with the worse offenders being Brazil, Colombia,
Guatemala and Honduras. An average of three street
children are killed every day in the state of Rio de
Janeiro. In Cairo, street children are routinely rounded
up and beaten by the police, their heads are shaven and
then they are transferred to crowded detention centers.
(I know of a boy who languished in the city jail for
years without charges until I sought then Mayor
Atienza’s intercession for his release, but he died soon
after because of ill health. I’m sure this isn’t
anecdotal.)
Higher
rates of drug use and involvement in petty crime make
them vulnerable to violence from others like them. The
main reason for gang membership is protection. (This is
by no means unknown in our cities.)
A
glimpse of
Asia
One
hundred fifty million children work in the Asia-Pacific
area—104 million of them in hazardous forms of children
labor.
In
Bangladesh, over 445,000, 75 percent of them in Dhaka.
The numbers of boys and girls are almost evenly split.
In
India, 11 million; Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have
over 100,000.
In
China, 300,000 of the children also sleep on the
streets.
In
Burma, estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000, less than
25 percent of all Burmese children complete primary
schooling.
In
Vietnam, in 1995 there were 50,000. In 2001, 75 percent
of street children had reportedly left home because of
poverty.
In the
Philippines, 2005, here’s the dope, according to
Childhope Asia Philippines: “Glaring inequalities have
been the curse of the Philippines, a land blessed with
abundant natural resources (is it still?) Over 50
percent of the population lives in dire poverty and land
reform is long overdue (they have not seen the
government figures).Undeclared civil wars are
effectively being waged in rural areas as resistance to
land grabs and movements for better wages are crushed by
military and paramilitary force. In the cities, gleaming
supermalls are built over the demolished homes of the
poor. The government’s wooing of transnational
corporations threatens the viability of domestic
industry.
“The
government estimates that there are 222,400 street
children with up to a quarter living in Metro Manila
alone. Some NGOs think the figure is several times
higher. Unicef estimates 5.85 million children live in
slums under the threat of violent evictions and more
than 100,000 are forced into prostitution and
pornography. Sex tourism is rife. Malnourishment among
schoolchildren runs at 60 percent.”
Mayor
Alfredo Lim is certainly not out of step in his campaign
against P&P.
Faces
Who said
that the death of one was a tragedy but of millions a
statistic? It doesn’t matter.
The
statistics on street children are appalling; still, what
they need is a face to jolt our compassion. The
imagination is paralyzed by huge numbers. Knowing that
the nearest star is billions of light years away affects
no one’s disposition unless they are astronomers.
In the
comfort of our cars, we are sometimes annoyed by the tap
on the windshield. They look strong, why do they beg? As
for the children, why aren’t they in school or in bed
when it’s already night, begging for food when they mean
money, or selling sampaguitas? What’s the DSWD doing,
for heaven’s sake, for these children who annoy us, who
are probably being used by some syndicate by the ugly
versions of Fagin?
No one
bothers to talk to them apart from foreign journalists
who come around and give us a “bad press.”
Dinyar
Godref and Fran Harvey of the New Internationalist
talked to two of them, Lean-Joy, 17, and Jack, 12, “who
looks 9.”
In her
own words, Lean-Joy related her life: “I’m studying even
though I live on the streets. I go to school at 12 noon
and go home at 7 in the evening. I work from 7 pm to 5
in the morning… I sleep around five hours a day. I don’t
feel too sleepy in school because I’m used to it….
Whenever we sell, we get chased by the MMDA. They say
it’s prohibited for vendors to be seen on the pavements.
They destroy some of the items we sell: the others they
keep for themselves to give to their families. Sometimes
when we sleep on the pavements the DSWD people try to
catch us, they interview us. They say they will give us
a house or a place in the center, but that never
happens. My mother got caught. One of them told her that
we’d be given a house, but up to now there is nothing…I
want to tell our Mayor: If it’s not OK to sell, I hope
that they will just tell us to remove our stuff and not
destroy it. He should not harm vendors and they
shouldn’t give away the things we sell because it is
like stealing from us…As for our President, I hope that
she will give jobs for poor people….
A common
complaint, but at the end, she wouldn’t lose hope
“because it won’t be forever.” With Childhope, she
became a junior health worker, helping other children,
whom she advises not to lose hope “because your life
will improve. Study hard so your dreams will come true.
Let us pray that the Lord will guide us so that our
lives will be happy.”
Jack
remembers a night at the Reception and Action Center (RAC)
after a police “rescue operation,” when “the woman who
caught us, cornered us and punched me in the nose. There
was blood and I had a swelling in the eye. I did
nothing. My brother also went to the RAC and they beat
him. A chair was thrown at him. When I saw that, I
escaped. I was wounded—here is my wound…I sleep in the
park. Sometimes I wake up during the night. As soon as I
wake up I start doing something—I beg, I ask for money
and food, even from strangers. Then I sleep again.
Sometimes I wake up in the afternoon. I don’t like it
but I also wipe shoes...I pick up pieces of cardboard to
sleep on at night. The bits that are thrown out by
people. It’s very uncomfortable. I don’t feel protected
on the streets. A proper place to sleep would be a
house.”
That’s
why he sketches a house for his interviewers. “The house
is getting bigger and bigger. This house is for me and
my brothers and sisters. Here’s a dimple on the sun.
Some of my siblings would study and some would guard the
house. That’s the kind of life I want to have for me and
my brothers.”
“You
must be dreaming!” he’s likely to be told. But he dares
to hope as Lean-Joy dares to hope, because he now has a
Childhope street educator, who like Lean-Joy is a street
child with dreams.
The
substance of dreams
“For
dreams must die,” was the title of a ’40s best-seller by
Zoilo Galang, which the publishing company stopped
printing for mysterious reasons, one of which perhaps is
that it was badly written. We can also dream of helping
out, there are many NGOs to contribute to: They exist
because governments are long on words and short on
deeds. (If you can access the Internet, that means you
can afford to help.)
The
unequal global system is crushing the poor. The cash
worth of “marginal” people keeps dropping, their lives
devalued. Children are often forced to the streets by
family dysfunction, but in the Majority World (once
called the Third) the root cause of dysfunction is
usually soul-destroying poverty. The numbers of street
children are rising day by day.
Soul-destroying, indeed, for with every Lean-Joy,
there’s a Rukshana, 15, of Mumbai, the sole care of her
11-year-old sister, who found that it was easy to fall
in love but very difficult to endure it.
*****
Children
are God’s apostles, day by day
Sent
forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
—James
Russell Lowell |
