BY WATIPASO MZUNGU JNR
Since time immemorial, there have been calls by government, non-governmental organizations and development partners to remove kids off the streets and find them a better place to live.
Street-kids or indeed beggars are the least people I want to see each time I go for shopping. Not that I am very stingy with my money, but I have two reasons why I hold such hatred towards street-beggars.
I don’t think begging can be the solution to our socioeconomic problems. Again, I always feel a street is not the best place where one can do his or her charity work.
In my thinking, the best way to approach these kids is to adopt one of them and raise them at home.
In July 2008, the Executive Director of Step Kids Awareness (STEKA) Godknows Maseko left Malawi for South Africa via Mozambique on a bicycle to raise awareness on the plight of street kids.
MultiChoice Malawi was one of the non-governmental organizations that sponsored his bicycle trip to the “rainbow nation”. Before riding off, this child rights activist told the media that the plight of street kids will not be over until people who claim to be Good Samaritans stop their practice.
According to him, the giving of alms to vulnerable children on the roads only exacerbates the situation on the ground. I could not agree more on this issue.
Many Malawians believe there is nothing wrong and that it is being considerate when you give a coin to a child on the street. But what people need to know is that the tendency that we call benevolence on the street has a very bad repercussion in the end.
For starters, I would like to remind Malawians that most of the young children gracing our roads are not there out of choice. It is problems plus problems that drive them on the street for survival.
Each and every human being desires to lead a life minus crises and hardships. But without invitation, crises will always come into our lives. The deadly HIV and AIDS pandemic has only added salt to a festering wound as it has increased the number of orphans in the country.
While appreciating that not all the children begging on our road pavements are parentless, the fact remains that the majority of them are victims of HIV and AIDS after losing their beloved parents to the killer.
Life on the street is not all that rosy that we can conclude that by assisting them with the little cash we give out while passing by will ease their suffering. The problem of street children needs more than our “street-benevolence”. It is more than the generosity we do portray on the roads to end the suffering of the child on the streets.
No one can appreciate the suffering children go through on the roads until he or she experiences it. When you see them on the street, do not assume that they are happy. They are there because their bellies need to be filled at a time when their houses are clean of any foodstuff. They would like to sleep under good beddings when their uncles grabbed the property left by parents.
Children on the streets also desire to lead a decent life, but fail to manage to achieve their desire because they lack human and material support. It is not the coin we give them that these kids need when they are on the street. Their appearance may speak louder than words: “Njala bwana, tithandizeni yaufa, bwana!”
They need clothes, shelter, food and protection. They need to go to school only if you can provide them motherly and fatherly care which they miss a lot after losing parents. Children on the street need education, too, in order to become what they would like to be when they grow up. They need more than the coins or banknotes you can give.
Unfortunately, many of us think street kids were born to be on the street and that we are their “daily street—providers”. By giving them the coins, we are assuring them of our continued support on condition that they should be on the street. And that is feeding or fertilizing the problem, not rooting it out. In this case, we are not solving the problem, but just nursing it.
But the problem, though, is that when these kids grow into adults with their street-life, they usually become notorious criminals in the society because we did not care at first. They will be faced with responsibility to provide for their own lives even when they have got no means and that will drive them into burglary, theft and robbery to get money.
It is sad that people are very fast at criticizing the police for lawlessness in the society when they do not want to deal with it alone while it is still in infancy. Sometimes I wonder when I hear people talk about being a human right activist yet they cannot see that children on the street have their rights, too, which need to be protected with or without their parents.
The problem I note is that many people choose to come in when the problem gets out of hand, which is a bad practice. We have a lot of children gracing our street begging for alms. The best way to assist is not to give those coins. The best way is to find means of how we can house them, provide for them all their needs so that they may go back to school.
Is it not surprising when people criticize the government for doing nothing on the problem of street kids? We have business tycoons in the country. But which one can tell the nation his contribution to the fight against the plight of street kids? I bet nobody can come forward.
Yet there are many Malawians playing generous people to orphans on the streets by throwing useless coins to the kids as we drive by. That is not helpful. Let us find a lasting solution to the problem. Otherwise, we should not criticize the police for lawlessness in our societies because we have chosen to nurture our future criminals. We have chosen to feed our own next assailants.
We shall always have the problem of children begging on the street until we stop being “street benefactors”.
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