Misconception (cont.)

Last post on this subject I talked about the first reason that I have observed that children end up on the street. I thought that I would continue on this post talking about the second way that children end up on the street.

Children are born into situations, and we all know that those situations shape a child's life drastically. The second way that children end up on the streets is a very complicated one; it has a lot to do with the economic situation that many families are caught up in. Unlike in the US schooling here in Kenya is not 100% free. Recently the government declared that education for every child was free, but the reality of the situation is that it just isn't. There is little money that is allocated from the government to the public schooling system causing many teachers, as well as supplies to go unpaid for. For this reason schools are forced to try and raise money to pay for their expenses by telling children to bring money, or school fees as they are called, from their parents. Many families just don't have any funds to allocate to school fees. It sounds absurd but when the choice is feed your family or send them to school, the choice becomes obvious. Years of this, as well as tribal attitudes have caused many families to put the need for education in the back seat. The problem that occurs from these attitudes is that as the towns become more industrialized, these poorer families are forced to live on the outskirts of towns, in areas that are so kindly named, slums. These slum areas usually consist of tin sheeting, or mud houses, packed very close, with dirt roads and no sewage system to speak of. I guess in the U.S. we would probably call them ghettos, which isn't any better of a name, but there is really no way to put a kind name on these makeshift towns. As the children grow up in these slums, and their families have no resources to buy them uniforms, or pay school fees, a child has two choices: 1.) stay around their slums, and work or just do nothing OR 2.) go to the streets where they can be free to beg for money, sniff glue, and do whatever they want. The pull of the streets an unbelievable force, that I may never understand, but many children choose this life. The children wake up in the morning, go out onto the streets, and then return home at night to sleep.

Many of the children from these slum areas are victims of not only poverty, but abuse from parents, and mostly step parents. Many of the households are forced to make a local brew, causing alcoholism to run rampant in the slums. This search for a better life is a huge factor as to why children often spend their days and nights on the streets. I could not imagine thinking "I want a better life, I know, I will go to the streets." That is just something that I could never understand, and it is for that reason that my heart breaks for these children.

I have tried my best to explain this situation in words, I know that it is scatter brained, and poorly written, but I hope you can see a bit of the picture.

In Christ,
Chris