Feature: Somali boy's painful struggle in street | Shanghai Daily

Feature: Somali boy's painful struggle in street | Shanghai Daily

Three years ago, Mohamed Hussein was a determined school boy who wanted to be either a doctor or a civil engineer when he stayed in Mama Halima orphanage school in Mogadishu. Now the 13-year-old, however, sees his future as dark.

Hussein was taken to Mama Halima school five years ago, where he was received as an orphan, given primary care and was accommodated, but it lasted only two years before he ended up in the street to struggle for survival.
Abused, mistreated and regularly beaten by both the older street boys and members of the public, Hussein's difficult life in the street is a legacy of cycle of violent war that torn his family apart and made him a lost boy.
Today, Hussein lives under Politecnico Bridge in Waberi district in Mogadishu, with dozens of other street children whose lives depend on sniffing glues and trashes dumped by the restaurants.
"I am a street boy, I am nothing," Hussein said, responding a question about his name and age. "I am a glue sniffer. I am an orphan," he continued.
The difficult journey that brought him to the street began in 2010, when stray bullets killed his mother in his home in the capital's Hawlwadag district. His father was not in Mogadishu when his mother was killed, and he was told that his father migrated to Yemen and had never communicated back.
More than 5,000 children under 18 live in the streets of Mogadishu without primary care, and are victimized by conservative civilian members, invisible organized groups and armed militia.
"I saw a lot of my friends killed by street violence. Some lost their hands and legs because of road-side explosions, and I saw soldiers raping young street girls," said Hussein. "There is only a dark future ahead of me."
Over the years, Hussein saw unidentified persons visiting the street children overnight and pressuring them to be informants for them. He also regularly sees armed militia exploiting the poor boys and using them for illegal businesses.
"Sometimes armed militia comes to the older boys and they ask them to follow them; they use them to search the people in the dark alleys when they commit robbery," he said. "They give you some money to buy food and glue for motivation."
Hussein also experienced some of his friends in the streets arrested by either police or national security forces for interrogations related to activities they were forced to involve by what he calls "ruthless" militia men.
Hussein covers his daily life with restaurant remains dumped in the trash, and sometimes he goes to the market to offer the shop owners a service of removing trash in exchange of bread and tea.
He refused to say how many times he was abused, but he said that he is not spared from the consecutive abuses committed by the street children themselves.
"Coming to the street is not easy, I used to cry for help and no one was coming to help me. Everyone who came to the street before me wanted to abuse me, but as days counted I got an ideal big brother. He protects me and I serve for him," Hussein described. "No mercy in the street, the most painful night is when you don't have glue to sniff."
Before the September presidential elections in 2012, Hussein met the current president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud who visited the street children as a presidential candidate then.
"The president was leading a campaigning team; they cleaned here for us and gave us some food and T-shirts," Hussein recalled. "He promised to give us home, we are still waiting."
The Somali constitution primarily guarantees the child protection, but due to the missing of all public services in the country, there is no current policy that focuses on the care of the thousands of homeless children living in the streets of Mogadishu.
Hassan Yusuf, a child protection official of Centre for Peace and Human Rights (CPHR), said that the street children increased for the last 6 years in Somalia.
"I believe the number of the street children is more than 6,000 to 10,000, because the violent war against Al-Shabaab and the severe famine of 2011 caused thousands of children to lose their parents and they live in the streets without caregivers," said Yusuf.
"Over the years, they were recruited as fighters, girls were sexually assaulted, boys as well and they are seen as bad people," said Yusuf, adding that there are no kindergartens and available orphanage centres, and the Somali government is yet to place any childcare program in place.
Nevertheless, Hussein called for the Somalia government and the international community to "turn their kindly eyes on the kids in the streets".
"I need to sleep a safe place; I need to go to school; I need eat and play without fear; I need to be like the children that have their parents," he said. "I request everyone including the government, the international agencies and good Samaritans to give us hope and help us."