Thika, Kenya: Street kids, world wide wait, and buda budas

So, three days in paradise and trying to get my head around all that needs to be done here.

The organisation I'm with works with street kids, trying to get them off the street and either back home with their families if at all possible, or else onto some other solution such as a boarding school or similar. Sounds fairly straightforward perhaps, but with the lack of government and community services for these kids it's a little more complex than first appearances.

Action for Children in Conflict (AfC) have a day centre and an Interrum Community Centre (ICC). The day centre is the first stage, where they try to get the kids to come in off the streets for the day (10:00am to 4:00pm) on a regular basis, and try to find out the issues that drove the child to the street, and any possible solutions. They also try to instill a sense of regularity into their lives, with rules such as having to be there on time, and having to put aside their glue for the day.

Yes, glue sniffing, a serious issue with the street kids. The initial stage is to get them to do without it for at least the time at the day centre. The aim is that over time they will agree to stop, though this can't be forced on them. Unlike perhaps our own society, it's very hard to "force" them to do anything. While there are special schools that some kids can be sent to, in the end due to shear numbers most will have to go back to their families. And though we can try to assist with some changes, such as helping a parent start some sort of income generation, or having our lawyer talk to the parents about their legal responsibilities (drunk fathers are a big problem here), it is also up to the child to realise that life's not going to be perfect, and they do need to put up with some hardships.

And that's the hard bit. They often believe that us "mazungos" ("white people" - not sure of spelling) can provide everything, that we have enough money to fix all their problems.

Anyway, for those who progress well at the day centre, they may either be helped to go home, or else be admitted to our ICC, which is basically a home where the kids live and get sme schooling, while being assessed more fully by our social worker while we try to work out where they should go: home, boarding school, skills/trade training...etc. This is probably where I'll be involved in mostly, trying to find various organisations/schools/training sponsors that can support the kids in some way.

Oh, as well as football training! Yep, been roped into organisating some sort of football training program, and may perhaps extend that into something more. There's an organisaton working in Kiberia, a slum area of Nairobi, who have a street kids social program based around a football competition, so will be visiting them at some stage to find out more.

Thika itself, the town where I'm based, is about an hour north of Nairobi, and is a pleasant enough town, though with the dusty streets as I've seen in most parts of Kenya previously. Don't know what it is about the dust, but seems to be the big difference between "western" cities and African cities. The local taxis are called "buda budas", which are bicycles with little seats on the back. Yep, so back to being "dinkied" around like when I was a kid!