WOES OF STREET CHILDREN IN ACCRA (P7) 02-01-08

By: Kofi Yeboah

IN the forenoon of Christmas Day as many Christians, resplendently dressed, commute to church to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a little baby girl lies on the floor in-front of a closed shop near Kaneshie First Light. Her 14-year-old mother, with her chin resting in her right palm, sits closely by as she gazes into the sky to exact a modicum of hope from the heavens for the future.
The teenage mother, Gifty Abena Baidoo, got pregnant at the age of 11. Gifty and Adwoa Victoria, her one-and-half-year old daughter, have no sense of Christmas. What matters to them most is how to get food to eat for the day. Elsewhere in the capital, many children are attending parties to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.
Little Adwoa has never seen her father since she was born. Gifty herself has seen Adwoa’s father once and that was the day they had sex on a school park around Kaneshie resulting in the pregnancy.
The home of the child-mother and her baby is the vast open space of the Kaneshie Market. At night, they sleep under sheds, in-front of stores or anywhere they could lay their heads.
As I took a stroll in the morning of Christmas Day, I got attracted to Gifty and Adwoa together with another woman and her two children taking shelter in-front of one of the stores at Kaneshie First Light. Initially, I thought the woman was the mother of all the four children and that aroused my curiosity because looking at her, she appeared too young to be a mother of four.
Curiously, I asked the woman whether she was the mother of the four children. “No”, she responded. “These are my only children”, she points to a baby she is breast-feeding and another standing by her side.
“But whose children are these two?”, I ask again in reference to the other two children. The woman points to the little baby girl asleep, saying she is the child of the other child who sits nearby.
“You mean this girl is the mother of the child sleeping?”, I ask, as disbelief, doubt, amazement and shock, all grip me. “Yes”, the woman responds.
That is the truth. Fourteen-year-old Gifty is the mother of Adwoa Victoria. She gave birth at the age of 12, meaning she got pregnant when she was 11 years old, a pregnancy that disrupted her education and life.
Gifty got pregnant when she was in primary class six. Although she wanted to go back to school after giving birth, help has not been forthcoming to enable the bright-looking girl to achieve her dream.
Gifty has no relative in Accra. Her father, an Ivorian, lives in Abidjan, and her mother, a Ghanaian from Saltpond in the Central Region, is dead. She used to live with a woman who was married to her late grandfather at Kaneshie near the Accra Academy School. But the woman threw her out of home after she gave birth to little Adwoa on the suspicion of promiscuity.
Beauty and fickle mindedness made Gifty an easy prey to boys, mostly head porters, ‘trotro’ mates and gangsters, who always lurk around the vicinity, both day and night, seeking innocent girls to satisfy themselves.
One night, as she went on an errand, a boy she met for the first time lured her to a corner of the Bishop School park near her house and had sex with her. She did not even know she had become pregnant a few months later until her guardian found out.
Gifty is very desperate. Everyday, she hops from one place to another looking for any kind of job that would enable her and Adwoa to survive. But the job search becomes an arduous task with each passing day.
She does not know anything about the Department of Social Welfare. She has resigned her fate to benefactors who toss coins into her palm as they pass by. When I pulled out GH¢10 for her as a Christmas gift, she received it with a trembling hand. According to her, the gift was the best thing that had ever happened to her. For me, the gesture is one that I will forever cherish to have made, more importantly, on Christmas Day.
A few metres away from where Gifty and her child laid, many children aged between 10 and 16 are battling for survival. They criss-cross the ever busy Kaneshie-Mallam Highway selling iced water, ice cream, chewing gum, boiled eggs and all sorts of items, regardless of the dangers they are exposed to on the street, just to make ends meet. There is nothing like Christmas in their world. Everyday presents a challenge for survival and they have no option but to oblige to the dictates of economic hardship.
Mariama is a 16-year old girl who hails from the north. She has to sell boiled eggs on the streets every blessed day because that guarantees her GH¢4 daily income.
Apart from the difficult life, Mariama lives on the street during the day, she also lives a night life that is rather exasperating. She and seven other age mates sleep in a wooden structure at Agbogbloshie, one of the shanty communities in Accra. They spend part of the nighttrading their bodies to top up their daily income.
Mariama gets between GH¢4 and GH¢8 daily through the sex trade depending on how good or bad the night turns out. She is willing to stop her night business but the economic pressure on her is too much to let go.
“I want to stop it, but I cannot survive with the little money I get from selling boiled eggs. If I stop it, life will be difficult for me”, she says.
Aisha, a 10-year-old class two pupil, walks on the pavements around the Central Mosque at Abossey Okai, and as soon as the red lights are on she jumps onto the street to sell her iced water. She looks so weary but keeps on moving because, according to her, the mother has sent her to do that business.
Interestingly, Aisha’s mother is at home doing what Aisha cannot immediately tell. When asked where her home is, little Aisha points to a direction that makes no sense of location. The only explanation she gives for selling on the streets on Christmas Day is that she is a Muslim.
Maame Efua is another girl who sells iced- water on the Graphic Road. She is a class four pupil at a school in the Central Region. Since school vacated, she treks with her mother everyday on a five-hour journey from the Central Region to Accra and back, just to sell iced water.
At 12, Maame Efua is a little older than Aisha, but like Aisha, she does not have a good sense of using a busy road like the Graphic Road. She takes a flight as soon as she hears shouts of “iced water!”, “iced water!!”, without taking a good look at vehicles.
For Abeeku, a 16-year-old school drop-out, there is nothing to celebrate at Christmas, especially, when the stomach pleads for food and life beckons for survival. For that reason, he has to be on the street on Christmas Day to sell ice cream.
Abeeku comes from Cape Coast, the Central Regional capital, and after dropping out of school in junior high school (JHS) Form One, he decides to come to Accra to make a living. He works with a relative whom he lives with. On a good day, he makes about GH¢5 profit from sales out of which he is paid GH¢2.
All around Accra, there are growing numbers of children who eke their living on the streets. They jostle each other, run across vehicles and shout themselves hoarse to sell their wares in the scorching sun. The look on their faces is full of determination to survive.
For those who operate on the ceremonial road between the Airport Residential area and the Christianborg Castle, one of the few moments that bring cheers on their faces is when the President’s convoy makes its daily passage to and from work. They wave at the convoy, hail the President and afterwards get back to business on the street.