Children’s Voices

Akim is 14 years of age and hails from Bumboi Village, Bungokho Sub County, Mbale district. He is the second […]

“With no food for several days, i turned to selling mangoes to buy real food ”.

“None of us ever stepped at school,thus had to collect waste bottles to have a meal”

 “Living with granny with no steady earnings, often sleeping hungry, i turned to the street for survival“.

At the age of 4, Annet was also introduced to scavenging and together with her mother it was the only way of survival. Just after a year, Annet had acquired lots of ill street habits.

Granny could come back home drunk and beat us every evening, we could starve and our feet were infested with jiggers and no one came to our salvage, Ayubu recollects.

After the demise of her mother, she was abandoned by her father as he could not take care of such a little child. She was rescued by her paternal aunt who rents in Namatala slum in Mbale where she has stayed to-date.

Often our parents would fight as a result alcoholic influence and this made our home atmosphere very unfriendly making life harder for me and my siblings. This forced us to fully join other children on the streets.

“For sure, life in Kiteso (slum) was difficult since our mother had no source of income. She could neither afford to feed us nor pay for the cheapest grass-thatched hut where we slept.” Jennifer says. ”Mum’s friends got fed-up with us and eventually evicted our family”

Born in 2003 as the first born to her parents, Shamim is one of the children that were formally on the streets due to harsh living conditions. Her father divorced with their mother in 2007 during which period the mother had a long illness and he left for Juba in Southern Sudan and has never returned.