Akim is 14 years of age and hails from Bumboi Village, Bungokho Sub County, Mbale district. He is the second born in the family of six children.
Akim was staying with his parents and they were taking good care of him. He however saw his father change suddenly. The father told Akim’s mother that he was not his blood. He told him that he was not his child and it was high time he looked for his father. He eventually chased him together with his mother. Akim went with his mother to her parent’s home. She eventually got married and left him at home. At the grandmother’s home getting food was a challenge leave alone getting school fees.
He left the home and went to the streets because efforts to locate his mother were fruitless. He has so far stayed on the streets for 1 year and gets food by picking and selling scrap metals and also getting jobs in restaurants where they give him leftover food. However, he laments that staying with children who take aviation fuel and constant harassment by the police has always been a challenge for him. It’s very hard to resist the temptation of taking aviation fuel when everyone is doing it.
Right now he is very grateful because he was taken to Namakwekwe where others are and he at least gets breakfast in the morning, lunch and supper. He sleeps on a mattress under a mosquito net and also got some new clothes. Child Restoration Outreach CRO together with other partners like Devoted Youths at Work in Africa plus Jenga, Link Child Foundation and Mbale district Covid 19 Task team have enabled it.
At the age of 4, Annet was also introduced to scavenging and together with her mother it was the only way of survival. Just after a year, Annet had acquired lots of ill street habits.
“With no food for several days, i turned to selling mangoes to buy real food ”.
Granny could come back home drunk and beat us every evening, we could starve and our feet were infested with jiggers and no one came to our salvage, Ayubu recollects.
"None of us ever stepped at school,thus had to collect waste bottles to have a meal"
After the demise of her mother, she was abandoned by her father as he could not take care of such a little child. She was rescued by her paternal aunt who rents in Namatala slum in Mbale where she has stayed to-date.
"Living with granny with no steady earnings, often sleeping hungry, i turned to the street for survival".
Often our parents would fight as a result alcoholic influence and this made our home atmosphere very unfriendly making life harder for me and my siblings. This forced us to fully join other children on the streets.