It all came to be known when a team of us from Youth Action International, headed by our Executive Director, Kimmie Weeks, embarked on a seven-hour drive from the Liberian border to Kono, Sierra Leone, to investigate for ourselves the plight of the street children of Kono. We worked to help the street children of Liberia, and now we were going to see what we could learn about the street children of Sierra Leone.
Upon our arrival, we made arrangements to meet and talk with the street children of Kono. We left our hotel rooms at twelve midnight and headed to the market on motorcycles. It was the best time to find them, because that’s when they need shelter.
The market was a huge rectangle covered with zinc and divided into stalls, a shelter with a roof and stalls but no walls. It doesn’t protect the children from splashing rain, wind, or heavy storms. The children sleep both under and above these stalls. They live and breathe dirt. We discovered that the street children of Kono have a whole government. They go out in shifts to “work” according to their ages. Makike, their head, is a polio victim who is known by everyone in the vicinity as “The Notorious One”.
Makike explained to us that children between the ages eight to sixteen go out during the day, from 7:00 AM till night to steal, and the older children go out at night. They all steal the same things—money, phones, food, spoons, dishes, jewelry, clothes, shoes etc.—and report these things to Makike before they are used or sold. If your property was stolen and you want it back, you contact Makike and get it back by paying a set amount for it.
The sad and wandering lives of these children and young people, from age eight to twenty-five, begin with different stories, but all have the same basis of abuse and abandonment. As we went on talking with the children, we learned how each one of them ended up on the streets. Some were taken from their villages by family members who promised their parents to send them to school and make life better for them. Instead, they were tuned into petty traders. At the end of a day’s sale, when they returned home and it was time for accountability, if there was a shortage in the reports, severe actions were taken against them.
Little children under the age of ten were sometimes starved for days; some were beaten mercilessly with electric wires or other harsh whipping instruments. Some of the scars left were so horrible, I shivered seeing them. Some of the children suffered broken bones. There was one young man whose hands were burned for returning more change to a customer. This brought tears pouring down my cheeks. Due to such treatment, the children left their homes to survive by stealing. Others had no parents (deceased) and had to survive on their own. Some were once in orphanages that closed due to lack of support.
We could see that these children were willing to do or participate in whatever was necessary to improve their lives. Just by hearing us speak of the hope of a new life, we could see joy in their faces and hear it the tone of their voices. They were tired of the cold wind against their bodies at night; tired of having nowhere to rest during the day; tired of knowing that some days there would be no food; tired of getting beaten down mercilessly when caught stealing; tired of being treated like rags.
The street children of Kono are crying out for help. They need a better life. They need places to live. They need to know how to sustain and provide for themselves legally. They know what they want. They are willing to go into orphanages that can provide their basic needs; they need skills and loans. They long to be loved and accepted and live a normal life. They long to fit into society. They are drowning and need to be rescued before it’s too late.
The meeting was a good, heartfelt and inspiring one, but I left there without a heart. I left my heart with them, a heart full of hope. Hope, that as they stretch out their hands to be helped, someone, somewhere, will grasp just the tips of their fingers. That someone will hear the last echo of their voices. That someone will reach out a rope and pull them out of that sinking sand.
Upon our arrival, we made arrangements to meet and talk with the street children of Kono. We left our hotel rooms at twelve midnight and headed to the market on motorcycles. It was the best time to find them, because that’s when they need shelter.
The market was a huge rectangle covered with zinc and divided into stalls, a shelter with a roof and stalls but no walls. It doesn’t protect the children from splashing rain, wind, or heavy storms. The children sleep both under and above these stalls. They live and breathe dirt. We discovered that the street children of Kono have a whole government. They go out in shifts to “work” according to their ages. Makike, their head, is a polio victim who is known by everyone in the vicinity as “The Notorious One”.
Makike explained to us that children between the ages eight to sixteen go out during the day, from 7:00 AM till night to steal, and the older children go out at night. They all steal the same things—money, phones, food, spoons, dishes, jewelry, clothes, shoes etc.—and report these things to Makike before they are used or sold. If your property was stolen and you want it back, you contact Makike and get it back by paying a set amount for it.
The sad and wandering lives of these children and young people, from age eight to twenty-five, begin with different stories, but all have the same basis of abuse and abandonment. As we went on talking with the children, we learned how each one of them ended up on the streets. Some were taken from their villages by family members who promised their parents to send them to school and make life better for them. Instead, they were tuned into petty traders. At the end of a day’s sale, when they returned home and it was time for accountability, if there was a shortage in the reports, severe actions were taken against them.
Little children under the age of ten were sometimes starved for days; some were beaten mercilessly with electric wires or other harsh whipping instruments. Some of the scars left were so horrible, I shivered seeing them. Some of the children suffered broken bones. There was one young man whose hands were burned for returning more change to a customer. This brought tears pouring down my cheeks. Due to such treatment, the children left their homes to survive by stealing. Others had no parents (deceased) and had to survive on their own. Some were once in orphanages that closed due to lack of support.
We could see that these children were willing to do or participate in whatever was necessary to improve their lives. Just by hearing us speak of the hope of a new life, we could see joy in their faces and hear it the tone of their voices. They were tired of the cold wind against their bodies at night; tired of having nowhere to rest during the day; tired of knowing that some days there would be no food; tired of getting beaten down mercilessly when caught stealing; tired of being treated like rags.
The street children of Kono are crying out for help. They need a better life. They need places to live. They need to know how to sustain and provide for themselves legally. They know what they want. They are willing to go into orphanages that can provide their basic needs; they need skills and loans. They long to be loved and accepted and live a normal life. They long to fit into society. They are drowning and need to be rescued before it’s too late.
The meeting was a good, heartfelt and inspiring one, but I left there without a heart. I left my heart with them, a heart full of hope. Hope, that as they stretch out their hands to be helped, someone, somewhere, will grasp just the tips of their fingers. That someone will hear the last echo of their voices. That someone will reach out a rope and pull them out of that sinking sand.
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