Wrapped in a tattered blue blanket, Antonia Manuel (9) and Rui Maguassa (10) lie down for the night in a doorway in Beira, on the Mozambican coast. The pair, forced to leave home as their parents can no longer feed them, visit their family regularly.
They are among hundreds of children moving on to the streets of Beira, Bulawayo, Lusaka and other towns in Southern Africa as dire food shortages — aggravated by the rampant HIV/Aids pandemic — threaten 14,4-million in six countries with starvation.
“Sometimes we eat, sometimes we don’t. If we find food at the market, we share it. Some children get malaria,” says Maguassa fatalistically. “We never go to school.”
The boys wash cars, or hound motorists for change. The girls sell vegetables, or their scrawny bodies.
Every day children are being driven on to the streets and into child labour by the food crisis, says the United Nations’ Children Fund (Unicef).
“In Malawi, for example, about half of the 3,2-million at risk (of famine) are children and about 20% of them are under five,” says Unicef Malawi director, Catherine Mbengue. “About 50% of children are chronically malnourished and about 6% suffer from acute malnutrition.”
Even in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, — where food is more widely available than rural areas — emaciated babies such as orphaned, and inconsolable, Hope Phiri, are admitted to hospital on the verge of death.
The conditions in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, are as grim, with shelters such as the Fountain of Hope offering some relief to destitute children.
During the day about 750 children attend classes and play drums and soccer on the dusty premises, while at night about a fifth of them sleep on the classroom floors.
“The hunger problem has worsened the situation. The children come here to eat, and stay on. Children are not like computers, they need care,” says founder Brian Mulenga (25).
“Most of their parents’ deaths are from Aids. Households here are looking after up to seven orphans.”
Anthony Ntambo, a wary 13-year-old, says both his parents have died and he lived on the streets with two brothers before moving to the shelter three years ago.
Eduardo Antonia (8) stays at Beira’s Youth with a Mission shelter after having lived on the beach. He falls silent when asked about his life. His parents are dead and he has an 11-year-old brother. “I like to swim and play soccer,” he says, after a long pause.
One of his friends has a torn soccer T-shirt with “10: Asanovic” printed on it and nearby another dances in circles with the resident cat. The hall, where about 26 boys are grilling sardines on a brazier and cooking pap, has broken windows but is brightly painted and the dormitories are crowded with mattresses.
Domingos Manuel Antonia, the 21-year-old volunteer in charge, picks up a theme common to the region: “Some of their families bring them here as they cannot afford to feed them or they don’t have space for them. Some of their parents have died of Aids.”
Walking past the fires of homeless people later Antonia observes — on the 10th anniversary of Mozambique’s ceasefire — conditions now are safer than during the war. “One of my friends was set on fire sleeping on the street, it was more dangerous.”
The founder of the Shelter of Hope on the outskirts of Bulawayo, David Ndoda, feels Aids is an immediate danger to street children, especially girls. “When we started in 1992 seven girls staying with us ended up in brothels. It was a shattering experience,” he remembers.
Now the shelter protects 61 boys and 10 girls, among them three abandoned siblings, from the hazards of the street. “Poverty is a major element. We have children of five or eight, who have known no other home than the streets,” he says.
Outside the sounds of jubilant marimba tunes fill the yard.
“They teach each other,” Ndoda says proudly. He also praises older boys for funding the studies of younger children, through jobs like carpentry. The older teenagers also screen new admissions to the shelter.
But, like any parent, Ndoda complains about the sloppy habits of the tribe of youngsters while walking past their rooms and the kitchen. There he pauses to point out heaps of beans and cabbages. “We survive on the generous donations.
“In the past there was plenty of food and we would take extras to children on the street, but not this year. I have stopped lining up for bread,” Ndoda sighs, referring to slow-moving bread queues in Zimbabwe’s towns.
“What do 71 children do with two loaves of bread? At times we only have one meal a day. It is frustrating to see the children hungry, when we are trying to rescue them from hunger.”