10/10/08
2:57
This week I read an article about a young boy from Ghana. His name is John Kibwola and he has been making a living on the streets since the age of twelve. After his parents died from a militia attack, he moved from his home village of Cwero to the town of Gulu. He said after his parents passed, he couldn’t take the harsh living conditions of his village and couldn’t get help from his relatives, so he moved. He now sells plastic bottles on the corner in Gulu. All the money he gets from the bottles goes towards his meals.
Another boy fetches water for people in town, in addition to collecting bottles and selling them. Doing this earns him about 200 shillings a day (13 cents American). A young girl who was only 15-years-old had resorted to child prostitution. She said she gets most of her “clients” at pubs, who consist of traders, truck drivers or men in the town. She earns between 3,000 and 7,000 shillings per day ($2-5 American).
The article then goes on to explain that many children are placed in IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. While there they are exposed to various forms of abuse, so they attempt to leave the camps for their homes or to resettlement camps closer to their original villages.
This article upset me a bit. I can’t believe that children so young have to live like this. It also made me feel guilty that I don’t appreciate the family that I have as much as I should. Reading something like this make me realize how truly fortunate I am.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80845
1 comment:
This actually reminds me of a project I worked on recently. In IARC we worked on relieving a natural disaster. In that area, poverty along with malnutrition and lack of resource (which all really go hand-in-hand), so we designed many things to relieve such things. It's really sad for us to see something like that happening, but to actually do something about it says a lot.
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