the street children were suspicious of my intentions for visiting their riverside camp. Perhaps they thought I was a police officer or a security informer tracking their movements. Many of these children were involved in petty crimes and were repeatedly arrested and beaten by the police. The authorities simply called it discipline.
But with time the children relaxed and welcomed me into their open abode, especially after I kept taking food to them every evening. They were used to people abusing, beating and harassing them, but when they saw me coming with food they opened up and warmly received me. After walking aimlessly in the streets and rummaging through dumpsites during the day, these children would rush back to the riverbank in the evening to wait for me. They were sure I would come. They were sure I would bring food. They were sure they would eat. I became one of them. This gave me a chance to get to know them better.
My wife, Esther, would cook a lot of food and pack it in containers. I would deliver it to the children at night. Initially, the children fought over it, but I created order and supervised the sharing exercise. On other occasions, I bought them bread, soda and milk. This made them so happy, and they started longing for my arrival every evening. And while they ate the food, I taught them the art of sharing among themselves and appreciating one another. The rehabilitation process had started.
As my relationship with them became stronger they started telling me their stories. I even learned their language—the popular street sheng—which we used to communicate with each other. For instance, they would get excited when I greeted them with “Ooooyeeee.” To them it was a moment of excitement, but for me it was a learning session. This expression would later become synonymous with MCF. In our interactions, the children frequently used words like buda (father), msosi (food), niaje (how are you?) and many other words that I have since forgotten. Today when I interact with the MCF children I still greet them with “Ooooyeeee.” This phrase also means “Peace be with you.”
While visiting the street children, I discovered that some were very sickly, especially the young ones who were less than 10 years old, because of the cold temperatures they were exposed to in the streets. In the months of June, July and August, it would get as low as 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). These children had no choice but to brave the cold by the riverside or on wet pavements. Some of them would cry in my presence, cough endlessly and shiver throughout the night. Others had acute cases of fever and diarrhea. I took them to the hospital, where they were treated for malaria, typhoid, acute flu, skin diseases and other ailments.
Furthermore, these children were dirty and smelly—they operated in dumpsites, and some had not showered or changed clothes for many months—but I sat close to them and listened to their stories. Whenever they were happy, especially after I had delivered food to them, they would hold my hand, brush themselves against me, pull me around, climb on my shoulders, struggle for my attention, play with me, and do all manner of things that ended up getting me dirty like them. When I went back home one might imagine that I had been rolling in a pool of mud. My clothes were extremely soiled. Furthermore, these children were infected with crawling pests such as lice, and I ended up catching lice too.
These are some of the minor challenges that I faced while reaching out to the street children, but they never deterred me from focusing on my main goal of rescuing and rehabilitating them.
For example, each time I returned home from Sosiani River, my clothes had to be thoroughly disinfected. However, to control this situation among the children, I would bring them soap and advise them to bath by the river and wash their clothes. This ensured that we all remained clean. This was a tall order for some of them, who had a phobia of water, but others took it with enthusiasm and practised some personal hygiene.
After continued interaction with the street children—playing, greeting and holding hands—I began getting itchy hands, especially at the back of my palms. My irritated skin began peeling off. I constantly kept scratching my hands. I later found out that I had contracted scabies, an extremely itchy skin disorder that spreads from one person to another through close skin-to-skin contact.
Medical experts say scabies is contracted from prolonged hand-holding with an infected person. It is caused by a parasitic infestation on one’s skin. Itching is the main symptom of scabies. It is often severe and tends to be in one place at first (often the hands) and then spreads to other parts of the body. If the skin becomes infected with bacteria, it becomes red, inflamed, hot and tender. Scabies can stay in your skin forever if not treated. It can be cured by applying a medicinal cream or lotion as prescribed by the doctor. My condition persisted for a while, and I went to the hospital for treatment, but I was not immediately healed. I lived with it for over 10 years.
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