Displaced children turn to the streets in Eldoret

By Dedan Okanga

Until two weeks ago, Naomi Njeri was a beggar in Eldoret town.

Njeri, 15, left Yamumbi IDP camp in January to join other displaced children in the streets.

Ms Mary Waithera says her daughter left home soon after the Government stopped food aid to IDPs.

"There was little I could do though I feared something would harm my daughter," she says.

She says Njeri would return to the camp occasionally with some food.

"She stopped coming home eventually," says Waithera.

Ms Mary Waithera with daughters, Esther Wangari and Naomi Njeri at Yamumbi IDP camp, Eldoret.

[PHOTOS: DEDAN OKANGA/STANDARD]

Thanks to Ex-Streets, a community-based organisation, she is back home and has even returned to school.

She is in Standard Five at Abundance Life Academy, a Catholic sponsored school in Eldoret. "She has been in school for the past one week and I hope she will stay there despite the hardship," says Waithera.

Njeri’s sister, Esther Wangari, is also back in school. She is in Form Three at St Elizabeth Secondary School in Eldoret.

"Life is difficult. We trek long distances for water and because of hunger and exhaustion, I lose concentration in class. But for the sake of my mother, I have resolved to bear with the conditions at the camp," says Wangari, 17.

Extreme hardship

Njeri’s plight mirrors that of many displaced children in Eldoret who have turned to begging to supplement their parents’ efforts to put food on the table.

Elusive pledge of compensation by the Government have exposed them to extreme hardship.

Eldoret West District Children Officer Philip Nzenge says some of the children are sent to the streets by their parents.

"It is easy to distinguish them from other street children because they only operate at certain times and disappear at around 10pm," says Nzenge.

He says the children leave school early in the evening and head straight to the streets while still in school uniform.

"They sometimes pose as stranded pupils near matatu bus parks and ask passers-by for fare," adds Nzenge.

Child beggars

Ms Anne Wanjiku’s sons, Stanley Waigwa and Peter Kamau, also left Yamumbi for the streets.

"We moved together from camp to camp but one day they just went missing only to learn they had become street beggars," says Wanjiku.

The mother of four says Kamau sometimes comes back home but Waigwa has never returned.

"His brother comes home sometimes but brings nothing. He also looks emaciated but he refuses to stay home," she explains.

She is worried Waigwa might have been lured by other street children to travel to Nairobi or other towns. "What worries me is that I cannot track their movements and if something bad happens to them I may not know."

"Food is their main problem and that is why they go to the streets but we have introduced a feeding programme to keep them from the streets," says Mr Peter Njenga of Ex Street.

Nzenge says some parents also beg alongside their children but most prefer to keep watch from a distance to ensure the children’s safety. "It is particularly dangerous to let underage girls mingle with seasoned prostitutes in the streets. This may expose them to paedophiles," he says.

Government pledge

He says more than 100 children at the Eldoret Show Ground camp have dropped out of school. In some cases, parents withdraw their children from school to make them street beggars, he says.

"Most of us depend on farming but since the skirmishes erupted, no activity is going on in the farms and that is why our children have turned to begging to help us put food on the table," says Ms Rebecca Wangui.

"There are times when life on the streets seems better than in the camps, especially since aid was stopped," says Mr Moses Mwangi, a father of five.

For such families, the only hope lies in the compensation pledge by Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta in last month’s Budget.