World Street Children News :: Rwanda Streetkid News

Bagpiper, harpist lend their talents

Young couple’s music to benefit Rwandans

By WALTER ALARKON Monitor staff March 27. 2007 8:00AM

KEN WILLIAMS / Monitor staff Myles Matteson and his wife, Dominique Dodge, will be playing in a concert to benefit Rwandans on Thursday in Brookfield. Zoom Purchase Photos Online A fter Myles Matteson and Dominique Dodge wed in August, they left for Rwanda, the east African country trying to recover from civil war and genocide. "I was kind of like, ‘You want to go where for our honeymoon?’ " Dodge recalled asking her new husband at the time. For five weeks, Matteson interned with Rwandan prosecutors, working on extraditions of people charged in the country’s civil war. Dodge taught English and music classes in Kigali, the capital, and volunteered at a shelter for kids, many of whom had lost their families. Now, back home, the New Hampshire natives hope to raise money for Rwandan children by playing in concerts next week in Brookfield and Vermont. "We don’t have a background in development," said Dodge, a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland. "The first thing to occur to us is, ‘Let’s do a benefit concert.’ " In their band, the Reverants, Dodge plays the harp and Matteson plays the bagpipes. They play Scottish and Appalachian traditional music with two others in the band, Vanessa Batts, a singer and guitar player, and Tim Cummings, another bagpiper. Tickets cost $10 for adults and $5 for children. The Brookfield concert, at Tumbledown Farms, will be Thursday at 7:30 p.m. They’ll also play in Shelburne, Richmond and Charlotte, Vt. Some proceeds from the Brookfield concert will go to Ninealone, a charity to benefit the Hermanot family of Sanbornville after its eight children lost their father to a brain aneurysm this month. The rest will go to the Street Kids of Rwanda, a nonprofit that provides food, shelter and schooling to needy children, many of whom had lost their parents in the war. The Rwandan civil war, fought between ethnic Tutsis and the Hutu-led government, started in 1990 and lasted four years. In 1994, Hutu forces killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus. Dodge and Matteson, who live in Epsom, are serving as the American representatives for Street Kids. Dodge volunteered for the group while in Kigali, taking photos and making videos of the children for a promotional website. During her time there, Dodge would ask the children, "How do you like life?" They told her that it was much better now that they were getting three meals a day, after scrounging for food in garbage on the streets of Kigali, she said. Street Kids of Rwanda helps about 365 young people, who range in age from 6 to 20. It gives shelter to about 75 of them and feeds nearly all of them. For these kids, finding food is their biggest concern, said Dodge, 24. Rwandan diets mostly consist of rice, beans and vegetables. Street Kids, which currently has two shelters owned by its Rwandan founder, hopes to find a larger location to accommodate more children. Matteson and Dodge have started a website to ask for donations. They held a benefit concert in Vermont before Christmas that raised nearly $1,000. Dodge and Matteson, 23, met seven years ago while taking music classes in Canada. They decided on Rwanda after Matteson, who was home-schooled on an Epsom farm, obtained an internship there. Matteson hopes to become a prosecutor and had interned with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia before he entered Wheaton College in 2000. He wrote his thesis on the judicial systems of the post-war Balkans and Rwanda. This summer, Matteson will be interning in the state attorney general’s office, and in September, he will leave for Oxford University to study law on a Marshall scholarship, which pays for U.S. students to study in Britain. Dodge plans to pursue her music career, as a teacher and a performer, in England. The couple plan to return and settle in New Hampshire. But they hope to remember Rwanda. "We have been incredibly lucky with the people who supported us and taking us in and showing us what Rwanda is like," Matteson said. "That connection helps keep the motivation in place to remember that the work we do here can have a huge impact over there." —— End of article By WALTER ALARKON Monitor staff

Rwanda: Street Children to Be Taken to Rehab Centres
The New Times (Kigali)

March 13, 2007
Posted to the web March 13, 2007

Gasheegu Muramila
Kigali

The Mayor of Kigali City Council, Dr Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, has said that the Council will ensure that street children are taken off the streets and accorded a decent living.

Addressing a press conference on the forthcoming Kigali centenary celebrations and the city’s challenges on March 9 at the Council Hall, Kirabo also urged caring persons to supplement the efforts to improve the street children’s livelihoods.

"This problem is not only in Kigali; street children and beggars are common in developing countries. Making these problems end can only be through everybody’s participation in one way or another. It’s a joint responsibility, not Kirabo’s alone," the mayor said.

Singling out the Gitagata Rehabilitation Centre in Eastern Province as one of the centres that will take up the children, Kirabo said that efforts in collating information about the street children would be doubled.

"Screening will be emphasized because it’s the only way we can know which children have guardians and those who don’t and need help," she added.

Responding to a query about the centenary celebrations’ time frame, Kirabo said: "I’m glad you people are in the media and your work is to speak and write. We have a better connection to the people through you. People need to know and we need their full support. What will you tell the people about the celebrations if we kept quiet [on the plight of street children] and concentrated on the preparations?"

She also hailed associations that have involved themselves in cleaning the city and asked journalists to also form a similar association.

"It’s important that you also help us in cleaning the city [the way] motorists, scouts and others have done," Kirabo said.

Kigali City’s hundred years of existence stem from the time of a German, Dr Richard Kandt, the first European resident who set up an administrative residence here in 1907.

DESTINATION RWANDA: PC Amber Thorne will visit Rwanda for a month in February and she is trying to raise £30,000 for charity Streets Ahead

A POLICEWOMAN is swapping patrolling the streets of Waltham Forest for helping street children in Rwanda.

PC Amber Thorne, 24, who works at Walthamstow police station, is attempting to raise £30,000 for charity Streets Ahead, which is based in the East African country.

It helps to improve the lives of homeless children and young girls forced into prostitution.

She is asking each Metropolitan Police officer to donate £1 so that she can meet her target and she thinks there are more than 30,000 police officers in London.

When she visits Rwanda, PC Thorne will teach street children how to play, cook and motivate themselves.

She said she was inspired to go to Rwanda because her friends Naomi and Mark Ogle set up the charity after meeting a Rwandan street child.

They decided to emigrate there and devote their lives to helping more street children.

"I have been given a giant hopscotch game to take with me and my friends have asked me to teach the children games like mother goose and hop scotch.

"Two of my friends were so inspired by what I’m doing they have decided to come with me", she added.

PC Thorne will go to Rwamagana, Rwanda, in February and will spend the entire month there before returning to Waltham Forest to patrol the borough’s streets.

She helped to organise an X-Factor for Rwanda event at SDA Central London Church, Crawford Place, near Edgware Road, on Saturday to raise funds.

l If you would like to make a donation to the cause or for more information, email PC Thorne on amber.c.thorne@met.police.uk.

Rwanda: Caritas Introduces Project for Former Street Children

The New Times (Kigali)

January 24, 2007
Posted to the web January 25, 2007

James Tasamba
Musanze

Caritas, an international Catholic aid organization in Ruhengeri dioceses has added a new artisan project in its programmes to benefit over 300 former street children.

Speaking at the official launch of the project, January 18, in Musanze District, the District official in charge of cooperatives, Salongo Nsolo who represented the mayor, asked the children to embrace the project as a way through which they can fight poverty and improve their living standards.

"This is a developmental idea which you should take seriously as it will help improve your financial status and lead to the economic development of the district," Nsoro told the children.

Reaffirming the district’s commitment to help associations which help children, Nsolo commended Caritas for transforming the children into responsible citizens. "The district will support such projects which are in line with the government plan of making all children live a descent life," he pledged

Dotta Mirco, an Italian national and architect of the project said the project was out of the realization to help preserve Rwandan culture and fetch money through sale of products to tourists visiting the Volcano National Park.

Angela Mukamusoni of Caritas, said they started a center for reintegration of former street children in 1997; under which the children are taught different skills including carpentry, welding, tailoring, hairdressing, and motor mechanics before they get reintegrated with their families. A total of 225 children have so far been trained and given work tools before being reintegrated to normal life.

Rwanda: Help Widows As You Discourage Begging

The New Times (Kigali)
January 12, 2007
Immaculate Chaka
Kigali

Poverty is the prime factor causing many Rwandans to live a devastating life. The most affected include the orphans and widows who as the only alternative have stormed the streets of different towns.

Most of the widows in Rwanda live a desperate life. Poverty is not only in terms of money but also basic needs like housing, food, education and clothing’s extra.
Western Union

It is due to poverty that most widows send their children to beg on streets or leave their families and go to stay on the streets as street children.

Street children are not the only people found on the streets begging, but there are a number of types people found in the city begging. Among these are street children who co-habit in the streets and street children who sent by their parents or guardians to beg due to the situation at home.

Street children are not the only people commonly seen begging on the streets, poverty has caused also mature people to leave their families, homes and go on the streets to beg.

One can think "But these beggars in the streets are normal, why they can’t work". I used to think the same way but after speaking to some of the old ladies from Rubungo in Gasabo district, who were moving from one house to the other begging for food, clothing extra. I discovered that at least they had a reason but instead of giving them free things, they should be helped get out of the unfavorable conditions which makes them beg.

While narrating their story to this reporter Anastasia Mukandahiro of 70 and Rose Mukakimenyi of 80 said "We are not pleased to beg at our age, poverty has forced us beg when it is not necessary. We have spent four years co-hosting in neighbors, we do not have food to eat, clothes to wear, money to take our grand sons and daughters in schools nor have houses to build on our own shelters said the old ladies.

I live a miserable life because I do not have a solution to my problems, begging helps solve some of my needs like food and clothes that good Samaritans offer me said Rose Mukakimenyi.

She further said though begging can solve partly her problems, it can not give education to her grand children and beddings.

Mukandahiro Anastasia told The New times that some time back she was depending to the pottery, were she could get some little money to feed the family but since the buying of the swamps were they used to collect clay from, buying soap and other basic needs became a great deal to handle.The issue of beggars does not call for the government only, it’s every one’s responsibility to help, not all beggars are after free things, among them are capable to do you services if given so long as there is a wage at the end.

Rwanda: Street Children, A Waiting Disaster
The New Times (Kigali)

OPINION
January 8, 2007

Richard Oundo
Kigali

I hope we are not waiting to revive Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal to the Irish government in the wake of increased street children on Irish streets, to allow us the plight in our midst.

Swift proposed then that since there were many street children whom the city and perhaps government authorities had failed to contain or rid off the streets, the said children be slaughtered and made a good dish on many dining tables of the affluent. Of course Swift was being sarcastic, ridiculing the authorities for their ineptitude to find a solution to the problem of street children.
Western Union

Today here, as you move on the streets of Kigali City and the suburb roads, there is an increasing spectacle of children, actually destitute children. These delinquents freely roam the streets appealing to any sympathiser to come to their help. They are begging to make a living. Many of these have been victims of the political terrain of the country over time.

They are a consequence probably of the bizarre situation that engulfed this fair nation. They have become destitute in the real sense of the word, without a shelter on their heads and with empty plates.

Only recently, the press reported in one of the provinces where a women forum was attempting to persuade the reluctant children to abandon the habit and go home. Here, the question which lingers is which home are children going back to?

Now, to the concerned authorities and the powers that be, this scenario is a disaster waiting to explode. These street children are dangerously coming to understand that life is characterised by living on the streets, eating from garbage heaps and loitering around. They will take this to be the norm. This is part of the citizens this country will have soon and they will need to take part in pertinent issues of this country. Question again is; how will they be involved when they are not baked at all?

These children are not getting an education, a prerequisite for their fair participation in national issues. They are left to vagaries and hazards of life; they too need a home and education lest they become a precursor to insecurity. Kigali City Council should not wait for the number of street children to increase before it notices that there is a problem in its backyard.

When a section of a population fails to achieve or acquire what it needs, it finds a way of manifesting the problem. In a city like Nairobi, it is paying for letting loose the street children. They have now grown into street adults hardened by the conditions they went through. They steal and rob with impunity. The police and country are grappling with the problem to date. A pedestrian’s security on any Kenyan street is not guaranteed. Thank God Kigali streets are still safe but no one is certain how long they will remain safe. Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart says, "When you see a toad moving out in broad day light you know that there is something after its life." The presence of these children on the street could be investigated so that we do not treat the symptoms but look back at the cause of this influx lately and tackle the problem from that angle.

Kigali is peaceful today because the street children are still children. Today they are begging, practically requesting their donors to willingly handover the loose change in their possession. When the sense of frustration develops, they may use ‘reasonable force’ so to say in police speak. We all know the consequences of this action, when someone coerces you into parting with what is legally yours.

Then rogue elements in society always wait for wrong excuses. The UN has always discouraged the use of child soldiers but the ears of dissenters never listen to this. Such a rogue charlatan will not hesitate to seize that opportunity to recruit in his ranks these street children and use them to cause havoc and even mayhem.

The children have lost feelings, have missed parental love and are accustomed to the worst life case scenarios. They do not need tutorials about hard life, they lived it after all. So they will be a target by the opportunists.

City council authorities should include in its budget this destitute even if it means appealing to donors to intervene and give life and hope to this deplorable group to avert a future crisis. Most of the children on the street are barely 10 years of age who should not be eking a living for themselves. It is deplorable to look at a child running after a person saying kufungurira, meaning, give me something to eat.

Women Forum to Help Curb Street Begging

The New Times (Kigali)

January 3, 2007
Posted to the web January 3, 2007

Willy Mugenzi
Huye

Butare Women Forum in collaboration with the National Police are set to curb the problem of the increasing numbers of street children roaming in Butare town.

This was disclosed during a children’s party organised by Butare Women Forum at Huye

District headquarters recently.

The idea comes after repeated complaints from shopkeepers over unprecedented increase of beggars who congest shop doors asking for money.

The district leadership also targets the development of tourism sector but was worried about the increased number of beggars who may disturb tourists.

Throughout the festive season, a number of women destitute, the blind and children stormed Butare town asking for money to start a New Year like most people feast during such days.

Beggars include street children and women who sit by roadside with their children.

Marking remarks on behalf of the Forum, the President of Women Forum and the district Vice-mayor in charge of welfare, Esperance Nyiraneza, urged parents to be watchful of their children’s growth patterns before they can run to the streets.

She said that street children who have been causing disorder in Butare town will temporarily be put in rehabilitation centres while those with parents will be re-integrated into their respective families.

It was noted that majority of street children are forced to run to the streets due to their parents’ unbearable behaviours.

According to police reports, unemployment and poverty have contributed much to street begging in the town.

Asked about the continued increase of women on the street, the Executive Secretary for Ngoma Sector Assumpta Ingabire said the sector had tried to provide loans to women to start some income generating activities but after a short time the same women are seen on streets arguing that they incurred losses in their business.

After feasting with over 120 homeless children, Women Forum members gave mathematic sets, pens and other scholastic materials to enable them go to school.

Rwanda: Street Children - Turn Not a Blind Eye

The New Times (Kigali)

OPINION
October 29, 2006
Posted to the web October 29, 2006

Stephen Buckingham
Kigali

A long time ago I started writing for The New Times and my first article was about street children. Nothing much has changed in all those years. Street boys - and as I have said before, the problem is mainly boys - are found in every city in the world and no-one seems to have come up with a solution.

The street boy profile is the same everywhere. He is about ten years old. He may or may not have a family. In fact, in many cases he goes home to a family after a day playing and begging. In Nairobi, for example, the street boy syndrome has become the street family. Brothers, sisters and mothers all catch a taxi at the end of the day and go home to where dad has been boozing on their street earnings.

The main thing in common with the boys, however, is that they almost all sniff glue or petrol. We just do not take this seriously, and yet it is a very serious problem.

Sniffing is not regarded as a habit like using marijuana, cocaine or heroine. Yet it is substance abuse and can affect the physical and mental state of the user just as fatally. Most sniffers use shoemender’s glue. It gives a temporary intoxication with hallucinations. During the hallucination the user has very little control physically. He may experience a good ‘high’ feeling, but not always. Sometimes the high may be a nightmare and he becomes violent. To increase the effect most sniffers put the glue into a discarded plastic milk bag. He then blows into the bag and quickly sniffs his breath and the glue vapour back. For about five minutes he is totally out of control.

On my first visit to Kigali in 1995, I was sitting in a pavement bar, which no longer exists. It was on a busy street and across from the bar several street boys had made their pitch. There were not so many motorbikes around then, thank goodness, but a few carried passengers from place to place.

From the bar I watched one boy take his ‘hit’. He blew into his ‘booty bag’ and took a sniff. He was off! He started singing and shouting, dancing into the road, oblivious of the traffic. One motorcyclist, with passenger, swerved to avoid him. The passenger was thrown off and broke his leg. The traffic stopped and a Good Samaritan driver helped the injured man into his car and took him off to hospital.

This was just outside a police post in town. The police just stood and watched and then took the registration number of the motorbike and the car. The sniffer continued to dance around until the ‘high’ was over and then he returned to the pitch to take another sniff. Nobody took any notice of him.

Kigali has changed a great deal in the ensuing years, but some things never change. There are fewer street boys in the centre of town, but they have dispersed to the various shopping centres outside. Kisimenti is a favourite pitch for many of them and you cannot go to Ndoli’s, the bank or the pharmacies there without hearing ‘cent francs pour manger’. There, by your side is the street boy, ‘booty bag’ or bottle of glue in hand, asking for money which he certainly will not spend on food.

Last week I noticed one young sniffer sitting in the central reservation between the streams of traffic. He was sniffing shoemenders’ glue, totally oblivious of everything around him. His eyes were red and glazed. His skin was pockmarked and scabrous - a feature of prolonged glue use. Two policemen were on duty at that very busy crossroads. They ignored him.

There was a small incident with a rather happy customer who had just left Chez Lando. He had obviously made some proposal to a young lady, which she did not approve of. Immediately the Local Defence were upon the man and the police were drawn into the altercation, which was all entirely verbal and over within seconds. But still everyone ignored the glue sniffer in the middle of the road.

We do not know how to handle the street boy problem. I have worked in education for nearly forty years. I did youth work in England for seventeen years, often in collaboration with the police. I am no nearer finding a solution to the young sniffers’ problem than when I first encountered it. In Kenya I befriended a young street boy; he showed a high degree of intelligence. I told him that if he gave up the glue I would assist him with school books. For a while he seemed to improve and my wife and I gave him school equipment and bought him a school uniform. He disappeared for several months.

Then one day I saw him at the shopping centre again. He was back in his street rags. His skin was leprous and he held something in his jacket which he kept sniffing on. This time he had moved up into the big stuff. He was sniffing pain relief spray. He was incoherent, though he still recognized me. There was nothing I could do, beyond having him arrested. But for what crime? The police would just say they had better things to do. The ‘do-gooders’ who gave the boy the money to buy the spray would simply say, "Leave him alone. He’s only a boy. He’ll grow out of the habit." But they don’t grow out of the habit.

It seems an odd connection, but you only have to look at the current problems Sir Paul McCartney is having with his estranged wife. This man, one of the greatest rock song writers in history, experimented with drugs in his younger days. He admits that. Now, nearly an old age pensioner, his wife cites his drug use as a reason for their separation. He has money. He can slake his addiction safely. An African street boy must either go for cheap, bad stuff, or turn to crime to satisfy his needs.

One group of church workers in Nairobi tried to persuade shoppers to buy small items of food which they then distributed to the boys. It was a good idea and it worked for a while. In Kigali the owner of the bar where I sat watching the boys promised each boy a half litre of milk each day if they did not sniff. That also only lasted for a while. Whatever we do, it only seems to last for a while.

What can we do?

Firstly, we must recognize that it is a serious problem. Sniffing can lead to more serious behaviour disorders. More often it leads to an early death. The boys spend what little they have on glue, which the shoemenders’ irresponsibly sell them. They don’t eat and they die of starvation in the streets or maybe under the wheels of a car as they dance through the streets.

The adhesives which are openly sold and used here by the shoemenders are banned in many countries. Unfortunately the alternative, though safer, is much more expensive and a simple repair to your only pair of shoes, which might cost you one hundred francs, with the safer non-addictive adhesives would be well over a thousand. So we rely on the addictive glue. I use it in many small jobs around the house, but it is kept well out of the reach of anyone who might misuse it. In England I couldn’t even buy it without a licence, after declaring its usage.

It is not the glue which is the criminal here. It is society’s attitude to the distribution and usage. In a recent encounter with some Bureau of Standards officers who were clearing the Kisimenti shop shelves of ‘out-of-date’ cosmetics, which are of no consequence whatsoever, I suggested that their training in hounding might well be better used. The control of substance abuse is a very good place to start. Any shoemender - or other user of the adhesives which the street boys seek - who sells such adhesive to an unregulated user should be instantly prosecuted and put out of business.

The street boys are very streetwise and they will very quickly find an alternative source, but we must practice deterrent measures and cut down their options. I do not believe that cutting down availability increases the ‘romance’ of the criminality; not in the case of simple drugs. If a substance is difficult to get hold of, the street boys will just abandon it. After all, they want to live on ‘Easy Street’ and when we stop freely handing out money and the police enforce regulations against the use and availability of such substances, they might be persuaded that life is not quite so easy on the street and look for an alternative.

That alternative could be supplied by the huge population of clergy we have in this country. It is not enough to just sing the praises of Jesus, who said, "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." We must also put in place the means for such little children to come to a better life. There are a multitude of brothers and sisters of God in Rwanda who spend too much time on their knees and not enough time on their feet. I plead with you, get out on the streets and see what the Kingdom of Heaven is in reality. Turn a cheek, but don’t turn a blind eye.

Rwanda: Street Children Get Skills

The New Times (Kigali)
October 20, 2006

James Tasamba
Kigali

About forty former street children picked from Ruhengeri town received certificates and tools on Wednesday October 18, after completing training in different technical activities.The children completed training in tailoring, carpentry, welding, and motor mechanics courtesy of caritas Ruhengeri dioceses.

Ruhengeri catholic dioceses’, Kizito Bahujimihigo handed over the certificates and work tools which included sewing machines, spanners, drilling machines and timber Landers and expressed the dioceses’ commitment to work with the government in shaping the youth to be productive and participate in the socio-economic development of their country.

"These children are part of our wider society and we should not let them wither in immorality. The catholic diocese is committed to work with government to find ways of integrating these children back to normal life" Kizitosaid.

Musanze District leader, Aimable Nsengimana, in charge of good governance who represented the mayor at the function, appealed to the children to utilise the tools offered to them properly in order to improve their living standards but not sell them for quick money. He said, "These tools if used properly can be a vital source of income; they are a good start as you integrate into normal life in society."

Nsengimana commended Caritas project for helping shape former street children into people with technical skills for income generation.

He noted that the action is in line with the government programme of helping all children live a descent life and with technical skills to improve their financial status. He reiterated the district’s commitment to have all children leave the street in Ruhengeri town. Emanuel Hakizimana, one of the children who received the training in carpentry expressed gratitude towards the training, which he said is a big boost for self employment. "I will never go back to the street" he vowed.

allAfrica.com: Rwanda: Street Kids Released

The New Times (Kigali)
September 26, 2006
Posted to the web September 26, 2006

James Tasamba
Kigali

Three street children, who had been imprisoned at Groupe ma prison in Ruhengeri town over theft, were on September 25, released after spending two weeks in jail.

The trio, Shangira Waliboye 13, Musitafa Harerimana 13, and Jean Claude Nsabimana 12 all street children had been arrested and remanded in connection with the loss of a video- deck belonging to the proprietor of Intercontinental restaurant in Ruhengeri town.

The New Times learnt that the boys had been free with the lady’s home that when the machine got lost, she suspected the boys to have had a hand in it. But later it was discovered that the boys were mistakenly arrested, and the video deck was later recovered."