Street Children in Durban - A view from a 10 year old.

I am proud to introduce my lovely daughter Jess, dance student, and actress, who visited Durban and their street children with our family in 2009.  Being only a child at the time she has a unique set of memories of being a child observing the suffering of other children.

Jess tells us more in her guest post below....

Jess aged 10 playing on Durban Beach (one of her favourite places in the world!)

Age 10, I didn't think anything could be so bad that it could cause pain to children's lives. I had a house, a lovely family and could chase my dreams, knowing there would always be someone to support me. It was how I'd grown up, and how I thought every other child grew up as well, but I was wrong, very wrong.

During my visit to Durban, South Africa, the street kids of Umthombo  were the friendliest children you could wish to meet and you'd never have known some of their backgrounds from seeing them. 

They welcomed us and appreciated us coming and I just wanted to play with them and have some fun, as after all they were kids like me, weren't they?

During the week that we were with Umthombo, we were not only there to learn but also to play with the street kids and be their friends, which is not what I can say about a lot of the community around them who didn't understand them or their lives.

DAY ONE- me and my mum with some of the Umthombo team, went round Durban to learn about the city, the kids and the situation at the time. It was a year before the major international Football World Cup which was being hosted in Durban, the city were told to 'clean up the streets and the city' to make a good impression on the incoming tourists and professionals who were due to come. The authorities and council did this but they took it a little too far. 

In South Africa, there are two types of police, the police department for the country and then the Metropolitan, the city police. The metro police decided that as the street children caused social problems on the streets, they were a problem which they had to clear up. 

The Umthombo team spoke of round ups and how they couldn't do anything for the kids when the metro police were involved, they could only help if the kids were in 'safe space' the Umthombo building itself. However, this would seem a perfect solution because you could just get all the kids in one safe spot. However, at this time Umthombo didn't have the facilities to keep children in over night so every day they had to force the children onto the streets for the night until 6am as Umthombo was only open between 6am and 11pm. So the team could not help regardless of if they wanted to after a certain time.

As we were walking around Durban we were told about this and on the way we met some kids that the leaders knew and had worked with, we even saw some of their artwork that they had tried to make a point with.

An example of street children art in one of Umthombo's art programs.

The street children were just like some of the teens from home, skating along grafitti on the skate park walls.

However one question that always crossed my mind was why are there no girls?

Towards the end of our journey round Durban suddenly out of nowhere we heard shouting and screaming. Me and everyone around me began to run as I felt mum grab my hand tightly and run with the group. Finally we reached the spot of the violence and shouting.

There we found a metropolitan police van with a large number of  street kids in the back, caged and screaming 'help!' , 'Get off me!', 'Let me out' and 'why are you letting them do this to me?!' A small child was reaching out to the Umthombo team and screaming 'please help me, please!'. We all stood there feeling hopeless as we saw the van of children being driven away. I asked where they were going and I was told, 'miles from here to the countryside where they have to make their own way back'.

After we saw, this mum made sure I was by her side the whole way back to 'safe space'. We almost reached Safe Space when my arm was grabbed by a man a lot older than me trying to pull me down an alley and luckily the Umthombo team knew him and took me away from him immediately. Within one day the true dangers for the street kids were revealed to me! The metro police and the streets itself.

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Slowly after this it was revealed to me why we hardly saw any girls. Girls were more likely to get into groups of men because they felt safer there even if they were being abused by them in another way. Boys in the streets had to be careful just as much as girls but many girls became pregnant or severely poorly from sexually transmitted diseases and with the lack of healthcare they got, not many would get better quickly, if at all.
To make it worse they couldn't escape from this place of harm, the streets was their home now and they couldn't go back to what they were used to.

Looking back on it now, it is horrific how young children, 'free' people were treated. And seeing it from such a young age really opened my eyes to how imperfect the world is when there is poverty like this on the streets around us. Why should any person feel forced to leave their home and fight for themselves, especially from the age of a teen maybe even younger. Why should any policeman have the right to round up kids and dump them miles from what they know?! It's just wrong and not fair. Whilst I was in South Africa I developed a strong hatred for the metro police and I began to refer to them as the metro bullies. I didn't understand why someone could be so horrible! I didn't even think that this kind of thing was legal never mind being caused by the law itself!!

Umthombo provide a Safe Space for street children in Durban to feel valued and develop.

Leaving South Africa, I remember vividly me and my mum sitting together on the plane, knowing we were going home to somewhere safe, and crying...because we knew those kids and young adults that we met, they wouldn't be going home, they wouldn't know where their next meal would be, and worst of all they wouldn't even know if they'd wake up in the same place tomorrow. I felt guilty for leaving and all I wanted to do was bring them home with me and make them feel wanted.

Jess is performing in the upcoming musical, Singing In The Rain at the Cambridge ADC Theatre with The Pied Pipers Musical Theatre Club.  Click here for more information and to book tickets.