Plumped on a sofa with a bevy of children, grand-children and nieces and nephews sitting all around, Awa Cheikh Sow is trying to keep her eyes glued to the television screen, but simply can’t. She keeps looking over with disbelief at the tall young boy sitting on the ground in a corner of the room in this small house in the old seaside colonial capital of West Africa, Senegal’s St-Louis. It is the day after the return of her prodigal son. “I cried so much,” says the small frail woman, prematurely aged by illness and hardship. “I was so happy to find my son again.” The boy, whose name is Ale and is around 15, looks up and nods in agreement. No one had seen Ale for a year and a half, and there had been not a single word on his whereabouts until his return the previous day in the company of three young men from a group that runs a shelter for street children, called Village Pilote. Its aim is to return children to their families and home environment. “We looked for you everywhere people said they thought they had seen you,” said his older brother. “Not long ago someone said you were near Touba (some 200 kms away) and I was planning on going to fetch you there.” He turned to the three men from Village Pilote. “Thank you for doing this, it’s really extraordinary,” he said. “We never force anyone to return home,” said Sherif Makhfou Ndiaye. “But when they’re ready we do everything we can to help. “Sometimes it’s complicated with the families, however,” he added. “Some of them don’t care, others don’t trust us and think we want something from them. So I tell them we’re only acting in the interest of the child, and that that is why we are bringing him home.” FORCED TO LEAVE VIOLENCE It was because of another older brother that Ale left in the first place. When his father died, and with his mother gone to live in St-Louis, he was left in the village to work with his brother in the rice-fields. “Whenever he came home and saw me and my friends and brothers playing instead of working in the fields, he would beat us,” Ale said. The boy ran away from the village three times to his mother’s small house in town, but each time she brought him back. So in 2004 he fled as far as he could go, joining the tens of millions of other children living on streets worldwide. The UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a 2006 report that it was impossible to determine exactly how many minors were living alone across the globe.
Beggar children, lucky to have a meal |
Drugs, violence and sexual abuse are common problems among the street kids |
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions