Street Kids

The existence of street children seems to be a worldwide problem, especially in the developing world. I re-read an email from my friend talking about her work with street children in Tanzania a few years ago and it seemed to be an almost identical situation there as it is here.

Basically, these kids mostly still have families and parents, but the parents are either abusive, don't want the kids and kick them out, or are otherwise dysfunctional enough so the kids have to go out on the streets to find food and/or a place to sleep for themselves.

There on the street, they encounter many "street" problems, like sexual abusers, and they also don't get to go to school etc. Often times they fall into taking a drug called "Rugby", a liquidish glue, which distracts them from their hunger pains and abuse memories.

One of VFV's volunteer placements is with the Department of Social Welfare's (DSW) street children program.

Volunteers with DSW can work in downtown Tacloban doing "street education", which is running educational activities for the kids, looking out for them on the street, and sometimes doing feedings.

Volunteers can also volunteer at a newly commissioned street children home in a place called Tagpuro, a forty five minute ride from downtown. The location is strategically far away from the bad influences of the city in a lush rural setting. The boys (boys only at this point) who choose to go there get registered in school, have 3 meals a day, and a place to sleep.

Unfortunately, the DSW is subject to the same corruption that many government departments in the Philippines foster. For example, there is supposed to be a social worker at Tagpuro every day, but the volunteers that work there say they rarely see one there. When there is a social worker there, they don't do any interacting with the boys. Some kids leave the center and go back to the streets, mostly from boredom.

These pictures were from a special day in which many of the VFV volunteers including Christian went downtown to run a feeding and a special games day for the street kids.

Sniffing "Rugby", or glue.
The kids that were high were not allowed to participate.

A Canadian volunteer serves as a horse.

One sign of status in the Philippines is your shoes. The most well off financially wear sneakers or high heels. The next level down is what the majority wear - "chenelas" or flip flops. Slightly lower is if you have chenelas, but they are a strange color like bright pink for a boy or a cheap looking plastic. And finally, if you don't have shoes at all, that is a sure sign of poverty.

According to Katrina, a volunteer who worked with the kids, most of their day on the street is actually quite boring. A lot of them are really good at finding what they need - for example, which vendor will leave out his extra food. When a foreign volunteer comes along, this brightens up their world immensely and provides them entertainment.

Katrina brought the kids along with her to an outdoor concert us other volunteers were at. The kids consider most of us young foreigner volunteers their friends so they were really happy to have a bunch of us to sit with.

But by no means did they feel confined to sit with us. They would get up, play fight with each other, and then take off running after each other and back, winding through the crowd and street with so little effort it looked like there could have been nobody there. You could tell they had practice finding their way around the crowded streets. The streets are their turf and they feel comfortable running and playing through them.

And their smiles and laughter took me away from the music. It was such unabandoned joy, a feeling of being a child wild and free with no one to tell you what to do.

I got a glimpse of this another time where one little kid, George, 9 years old, was so happy when he recognized me at an outdoor barbecue. He yelled "Ate!" (respect word for older women), grabbed my hand and took me running with him. He started pointing to all sorts of things that interested him - a guard in a red uniform, a spotlight, a car. He smiled, and laughed, and I felt for a second the joy of running through the streets like a street kid. Be happy this moment, because terrible things might happen the next.

They definitely have their own special world which they live in. Because they have no one else to look out for them, some of them band together and look out for each other. The groups are very strong. For example, if a new boy comes to the home at Tagpuro he will be tormented until the group feels they can trust him. Once he gets accepted, the bonds are tight. Volunteers report that at night at Tagpuro, although it is hot, the boys sleep together in a big pile, almost like dogs, with arms and legs wrapped around each other.

Free from societal influences, they form their own society with their own rules. For example, sex for them starts really young, and happens between many of the older and younger boys. They were having issues with this part of their societal norms in Tagpuro, the home which at this point only accepts boys. One of the kids, 8 years old, even propositioned one of the male volunteers, because for this little boy, sex is almost just a form of affection. This does not help when they encounter child molesters however.