Influences, be they good or bad, are a part of life. When you are a child “on the street” and they come from bad company they can be a problem… just ask JK…
JK is one of the 100 children in the “Education and reintegration of street children” project. He is one of the first group of children, and has now been with us for 8 years. He is 17 years old and is the oldest of a family of 5 children in a situation of great need. He entered the world of the street at the age of only 6. His father sold homemade liquor and took him along to very undesirable places (bars, game rooms, discotheques…) instead of taking him to school, as would befit a child of his age. At age 8, JK already sold liquor on his own…At the FAR registration interview; his mother told us that he often came home late at night smelling suspicious… His mother digs out sand that she sells to make adobe bricks.
A view from Rimkieta: children on the street
There is a large esplanade near the FAR where women go to dig. And it is there where Drissa, who leads the project, finds the majority of new children each year. A woman who spends all day digging in sweltering heat to earn a pittance is surely to be the mother of a family in extreme need… After getting JK’s father to accept doing without his “distributor,” JK began his “new life” in the FAR in 2008…
But JK had already experienced 3 years of street life, and that leaves its mark… and many bad companions, jealous of the great opportunity that FAR afforded JK. Someday I will tell you about something that I find hard to understand about this wonderful society: the lengths they will go to because of jealousy and envy…
The history of JK’s early years with us is full of fights in class and at home, theft, truancy from school, and running away from home for days at a time… The situation became very difficult for FAR to control, so we had to place him in Kam Zaka, a boarding school specializing in problematic street children. After 3 years in Kam Zaka, this year JK has returned home and to the FAR for “good behavior.”
One of the “Street Children” project’s activities is to gather all the boys together – those who are newcomers to the FAR and the “veterans” who are in school and vocational training – on a Sunday morning in a relaxed weekend atmosphere. After giving them breakfast (which is critical to getting them to come), the kids have fun playing music and dancing (the primary Sunday activity!), or playing soccer and board games. All the activities are the “bait” so they will feel like coming, as the main objective is the educational talk that we give them at the end about the dangers of the street, violence, hygiene, behavior, nutrition, etc.
Music, the primary’s FAR Sunday’s activity!
We always finish the talks with a game on the subject at hand. This last Sunday the lecture was on how to avoid falling into the street life, and we asked the boys to share their personal experiences. It was not easy for children to dare to share their private matters, but JK boldly offered an experience that won him the T-shirt that was at stake as a prize.
He told us that last year, while in Kam Zaka, one morning on the way to school, he ran into one of his former “friends in misdeeds,” a guy older than he, who “ordered” JK to help him “collect” iron on the street to sell it. JK refused to follow him, but the guy threatened him, so he had no choice… After a few hours collecting iron, they came upon a few guys roughhousing, which distracted the older guy, so JK took advantage to escape and run off to school. JK swears he had a death threat over him by this guy for a long time, and had to change his route to school in order to avoid him.
FAR’s 8th class children
All the problem kids who have avoided situations like that are due a lot of merit, but JK’s is even greater. His progress has led him to become an example to be followed by his peers.
The history of JK fills us with hope and energy to keep on going. Because unfortunately, not everyone manages to say “I don’t want to follow you,” and some of the project’s children have fallen by the wayside…