Cry of The Kenyan Street Child

''Street children are lovely blossoms just dropped from the tree after a heavy storm. Now they need to be put together with a needle and threads of security and shelter to live into a beautiful circle of life's garland''

Nights never end, they are filled up with ghostly cold winds and sometimes heavy raindrops. The skies may be clear, and the moon may shine brighter, but this is not the case for his future. He shivers into his worn-out clothes and covers himself with his oversize jacket to protect them from the cold and bites. He has a small dirty bottle of glue, hidden in the breast pocket of his shirt. It helps him get high and forget his troubles. In his mind run the next day’s worries. He tries to get some sleep then gets a sudden attack from the biggest boy in the group. He demands some coins as protection fees. The big boy's demands get them into a heated argument which may end up with a fight which is interrupted by police who are on patrol duty in the city streets. The men in uniform are their greatest enemies since they are government representatives, they have orders to ensure no street children traipse the city, and because of this, they become punitive on them. Nights never end. As dawn comes he must get something to eat, he scavenges for leftovers at the garbage site and finds something just to tease the grumbling stomach. There he meets his friends and they make the day’s mission and engage in chats of how they managed to escape the cruel city police on the previous day. Since they do not have any day’s duty, they just walk aimlessly past and along the city dwellers that are on their way to work, and past children in uniform who are on their way to school-it makes him feel bad.

He holds hard on his brown cap, ( it was once white and he probably got it from the presidential campaigners, the best gift he has ever had from the 'big men') as they aim for a truck and hang over the rear and it speeds toward another city estate. They jump down when it gets caught in a traffic jam. They do not mind about the risk they are in but anyway, to them it is fun. With sacks on their back, they pick metals and other stuff they find valuable so that they can exchange them for some few coins. Their bottles of glue still stuck on their mouths, they say the glue makes them active and energized. An angry group follows them for a fight over nothing and that becomes the cause of their scars and wounds that won't heal. It is a life full of difficulties that won't end any sooner. The day ends.

Our country is among the developing nations of the world and it faces almost all challenges associated with developing nations. Among them is a lack of wealth with heavy debts, poverty unemployment, and crimes, and a poor education system.

Poverty has been the main reason for street children. Almost a half of the population lives below the dollar a day and parents are not able to satisfy all the family needs. As a result, many children run to the city streets, having in mind that they will find their needs. It turns out to be the opposite as life presses harder on them. This explains the existence of a group of street children who spend their nights at home and the day on the streets.

Urbanization and industrialization come in as companies want cheap labor. The ideas that urbanization has created more employment opportunities has made families opt for towns to find jobs and money. It never comes to this as most of them end up unemployed, and consequently, they cannot support their family needs. They end up as street families with street children.

Broken families is another reason. The family structure may also be unstable leading to disagreements between the parents. They eventually separate and run away from their duties and responsibilities of taking care of their children. Their children run through the streets to find comfort which becomes a mirage, a reason why some children are in the street are from far and rural areas.

Besides the word the street children being taken as a general word for every kid that roams the streets, and also for any kid that scavenges bins and dump sites for food and other valuable things like scrap metals, there are two groups under this word.

The first category is those kids who have parents and homes where they occasionally sleep and then spend the day on the streets. Their main reason for this is to find money and food that their parents cannot provide for them . They are runaway kids who do not care about school or other home duties . Their comfort and peace lie by spending the day on the streets.

The second category, are those kids who are totally homeless and parentless and the only option is to live in the streets. Most of the children in this category are orphans and have been neglected by their intermediate families and the society making them have the street life as an option.

You will never miss them on the streets. Not that healthy but they are still strong on their feet and hard to let their tears flow. With complete neglect by the national and county governments, their families and those responsible for them, they still eat, but not enough to satisfy their hunger.

They make little money that is only and not enough for food yet they have other basic needs. A large portion of these monies comes from:

• Selling water using handcarts, it is a tough job searching for clean water in the city. Filling the big 20-liter jerry cans and pushing the carts on the streets so that they can earn some profit which they will share amongst themselves
• Selling scrap metal. This is the reason why they will always have sacks on their back to carry any material like metals from cans to rusty corrugated iron sheets which are sold at Ksh 20 per kilo.
• Collecting plastic bottles for recycling, although the government has banned the use of plastic in our country, they still can generate some coins.
• Collecting wood for backstreet eateries who in the exchange offer them food and drinks.It is hard to get the wood unless they have to steal them from construction sites.
• Girls can engage in laundry and other handiworks, which pay little coins. These small jobs often come from harsh and unkind residents who pay less for heaps of clothes and heavy skin carpets.

Girls face the toughest lives, especially the teenage girls who lack the sanitary pads and are prone to defilement and sexual abuse. This poses them the danger of getting STI's, early pregnancies which after birth they end up abandoning the children who consequently die. Many kids are found dead and abandoned in the garbage sites and this explains that best.

Lack of clean water, a home and diseases affect these kids worse. They drink from seawater or leaking pipes, and rarely wash their clothes and bodies. They end up contracting hygiene-related diseases.

Lack of health care is a challenge to them as more kids are born infected. There are those who also give birth on the streets and have no ideas on how to handle the newborns. For this reason there is a high mortality rate among the children born on the streets. Most boys engage in fights and end up getting wounds and scars that end up untreated and that turn up to infections.

They cannot get education because it is as if there is a line drawn between them and other children of the world. No school uniform, no books, and no shoes and there is nobody who cares including the self-made government. A large population of them are school dropouts, at grade three to four and are aged less than 15 years.

They are addicted to sniffing glue and they cannot afford to keep away from it a day. It makes them feel energetic and active. The health effects of sniffing can be seen in them. Many have lost their sense of hearing and have breathing problems. They do not know these effects, and even if they knew, they still would ignore them.