A tale of four children struggling to survive

Rebecca, 14, Abdul, 10, Anna 6 and Steven 5 (not real names) have two things in common- same mother, and all lost their fathers.

Their mother is living with HIV/AIDS. 

She was recently diagnosed with kidney disease which has worsened her health and now she lives in a state disability, she cannot move, can hardly speak and cannot do anything on her own. 

As a result, her children, headed by the 14 year old, have to struggle to make ends meet.

"Tea is all they can afford to have, mere water with tea leaves that good people give them, sugar is a night mare and when they have some, it is for only their sick mother."

Riding through a meandering pathway, we past a small dilapidated mud house, different from the rest we had come across earlier, here; children were played and made noise. As we rode off on a boda boda, they all waved as they shouted “see you teacher Rachael.” 

My eyes turned back to look at the children speaking such well constructed English moreover deep in a village in Namayumba sub county, Wakiso district.

The two girls wore dirty dresses while the boys wore shorts with bare chests. It is not that they do not want to put on shirts; they just do not have the shirts, apart from their uniforms.

I had been roaming through the village with Kisaakye Racheal, a teacher friend of mine. The story she told me about these children opened my wells of sympathy that I made an unplanned visit to their house that very evening.

It was about to 7pm, it was getting dark but they were still not sure of what they were having for supper. Playing seemed the only consolation to beat the anger and forget the seemingly usual situation. Despite their state, they kept smiling at us, hoping we walk in with a ray of hope.

Inside their tiny room, a dusty floor littered with plastic cups and plates, jerricans and clothes, their mother helplessly lay on a bare mattress, one other supposedly the one all the four kids share) also lay on the other side of the room.

She could not speak, I learnt that this is how she had been over the past few months, renering her disabled to care for her children. Instead, they have to care for her. 

“Since she got sick, she cannot move and work, she crawls to the shade and sits there until evening and then crawls back to the house to sleep,” a neighbour told me.    

Under the shaky shade besides the house, six year old Anna fidgeted to place a kettle on the fire stones to prepare tea for their ill mother, she wore a ragged dress, held a dirty knife in her hands, which she had been using to eat a mango. Anna looked too tiny to prepare any meal yet she has no choice but to do it. Rebecca, the eldest, supervised her other siblings to make sure all work this evening goes on well. 

Their mother’s state of inability is what turned them into parents of themselves. Routinely, they wake up to think up ways of surviving through the day, Rebecca wakes up to make tea for their mother and to mobilise her 3 siblings to get ready for school. 

“We wake up very early in the morning, to first make tea for mum and then prepare ourselves to go to school.” Rebecca says

Rebecca has to struggle to command her siblings and yet she is a girl who is not old enough to command her male counterpart Abdul, who she says often give her hard time. 

“Abdul goes to the trading centre every evening and he comes back late in the night and he starts conversing for us movies that he has watched from the bibanda,” she reported “When I tell him, he says if I report to teacher Racheal, he will kick me,” she adds 

Abdul in defence says he rarely goes there but when he does, he goes to see if he will get something to eat, and because no one keeps an eye while they are home, they all do as they please and it is survival for the fittest.

Tea is all they can afford to have but the tea is mere water and with a little tea leaves that good people give them, sugar is a night mare and when they have some, it is for only their sick mother.

“We make tea for mum, for us, now that it is a season for mangoes and maize, we look for mangoes and we eat those ones for supper until tomorrow when we go to school,” Rebecca says

They devise all means to get at least a meal. But God indeed cares for his people, these children have no garden, they do not dig and yet they have to find food for both their mother and themselves to survive, but they still survive

“Some good neighbours give them food to eat, one gave them a small garden of maize although they should have finished it by now and now that it’s a mango season, they most times sleep on those until the next day at school,” says Kisaakye

Until recently, these children of school going age were not in school. They were committed to caring for their mother and just roaming about the village to find a living. They had been going to schools before but since no one could pay for them schools dues after their mother’s sickness, they were always sent home for school fees until the schools decided to send them away for good. 

“That is why they are older than their classes; their studying was on and off, they were chased from one school, they went to another and this retarded their education,” Says Kisaakye.

Kisaakye, whom they prefer calling teacher Rachael, had heard of their story from their neighbour and decided to pay for them to study at Fountain academy in Namayumba so that they can study and live a better life. 

“I was touched but I realised that the only way to help them was to take them to school, because at school, they would get breakfast and lunch and they would only struggle to find supper,” says Kisaakye

Kisaakye also provides for them other scholastic materials like books and pens, uniforms and shoes and some times food when she affords.

Rebecca, the ‘situation turned’ family head, normally gives a report to Kisaakye about how each of her siblings behaves and Kisaakye talks to them like their own parent.

At 14 years, Rebecca studies in P4, and her siblings, P2, and top class respectively. Their days are brighter now, since they are assured of lunch at school, a meal day is at least better than none at all. But although they can eat one meal a day and be better of than many others who do not even get a mango; a lot remains to be desired about their life style.

They lack the other basics of life, the shelter is worrying, other basic necessities are also too lacking.Their health is also at risk, Anna is HIV positive, and also on ARV’s, supervising her treatment is not easy now that it is in the hands of a fellow child. The poor feeding could also be dangerous to her health.

this is just one of the many households in Uganda that are headed by children like Rebecca. the syndrome is so common in the rural areas where many orphans head their homes after they have lost their parents.

Kisaakye has done what she can, but healthy mind also needs a healthy body and therefore, compassionate hands are welcome on board to help these children.

tumusiimetrudy@yahoo.com

Child vulnerability in Uganda on the rise

By Gertrude Tumusiime

A situational analysis report carried out in 2010, by the ministry of Gender, Labour and social development (MGLSD) indicates that Over 96% of all children in Uganda are in a state of vulnerability. According to the analysis, the children in this state are either critically or moderately vulnerable, as specified by the National Orphans and other vulnerable Children (OVC) policy.

Research also asserts that children make up 57 % of Uganda’s total population of over 30 million. This adds up to an estimated number of over 17 million children below the age of 18 years.  

The national OVC policy specifies the critically vulnerable children as the orphans whose rights are not fulfilled, children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, children with disabilities, those in child labour, children experiencing various forms of abuse and violation, street children, those in contact with the law, in child headed households, those in armed conflicts and finally those assessed to be in need of immediate care and protection. 

On the other hand, the moderately vulnerable children are noted as the out of school, child mothers, children in poverty stricken areas, those involved in hazardous work, children living with the elderly or guardians with disabilities and those in hard to reach areas like war tone areas and remote villages.

These children according to the report, live with their full potentials underutilized for example majority of them live under despicable conditions of improper care, neglect, without education, in poverty and other dire conditions such as sickness. 

The magnitude of the problem has been accelerated by orphan hood status, with the number of orphans increasing over the years, from 11% in 1999/2000 to 13% in 2002/2003 and 14% in 2006 although it slightly reduced in 2010 according to the report.

Orphan hood has been majorly blamed on death of parents to HIV/AIDS and Malaria leaving children in the hands of relatives who are either unable to give them proper care, or abuse them. And as a result, most children end up in a state of helplessness.

Other than orphan hood, other causes have been blamed for the problem of vulnerability include difficult socio-economic circumstances such as poverty, domestic violence, low incomes, household food security and poor child care practices.

Cultures practices in some areas are also blamed for accelerating the problem citing an example of those that permit early marriages leading to child mothers. Inadequate adoption of family planning methods, which increases the numbers of children produced while their parents are not ready to take care of them, is also a cite cause.

While children’s vulnerability is wide spread in all parts of the country, the report shows that the problem is highest in the post-conflict areas, especially the northern Uganda, presenting more unique categories of vulnerability like child motherhood, children living in Internally Displaced People’s camps, children who after being abducted were forced to marry rebels, former child rebels and children in conflict with the law among others.

The same report ndicates that only 115 of the children in great nee had been reached by external support, with greatest support coming through education and health while social economics, food and nutrition interventions were poorly managed.

What has being done to address the problem?

According to Magall Moritz, the head of the OVC national implementation unit, despite all the previous responses made by the different stakeholders in solving OVC matters, Child vulnerability remains a major 

The unit under the MGLSD has recently launched the second National strategic program plan of intervention to guide all people in providing comprehensive services to the OVCs, with an aim of improving situations of children in Uganda. 

Different from the previous one, this programmed plan is designed to reach the vulnerable child from the grass roots.  This plan also takes a multi-sectoral approach, bringing together all the stakeholders to play different roles in handling the problem of OVC.

“We are working with the office of the Prime minister, the ministry of education, the ministry of water, UNICEF and other stakeholders, in order to address the problems of children for example, to improve conditions in Karamoja to reduce the numbers of children coming to Kampala.” Says Mondo Kyateeka, the commissioner for Youth and children, MGLSD

The ministry is also investing in other strategies to address the causes of the problem such as sensitizing people to produce children they can take care of in order to reduce the problem.

“What causes the problem is because people just produce without any planning, we want them to stop unwanted pregnancies, this way they will be addressing the problem at hand.”  Says Kyateeka

However, all set aside, the best solution to the problem according to Kyateeka is to rejuvenate the historical values of love and care existed in communities long ago, in that when a parent dies, a relative or guardian can take care of the orphans as the parents would have.

tumusiimetrudy@yahoo.com