Day 2 - Meeting Angela on night outreach

Monday 22nd July

Today I was being introduced to Friends of the Street Children, which partly involved joining the outreach workers on night outreach. To maintain anonymity, I decided to mix and match different elements of different people’s stories and use a made-up name.

I didn't get Angela's permission to put her picture on my blog, so this the picture from a google image search that I thought most resembled her.

Angela

Angela was an outgoing and bubbly girl. When we bumped into her as we walked through the streets of Kitwe at night, she asked for her picture to be taken, and then looked at the image on the digital camera and exclaimed “Ah! I am beautiful!”

Her father died when she was young, and her family continued without the main breadwinner for some time, but eventually her mum became sick as well, and the family couldn’t afford to keep all the kids, so Angela ran away. She hung around in the town nearest her village for a while, but then she came to the copperbelt town of Kitwe because there’s a big mining industry here, and she heard there’s more wealth here.

Some time back, she was out one night in a group of street kids sniffing petrol. (High quality drugs aren’t really available on the streets of Zambia, so street kids mostly rely on fuel and glue sniffing) A fire broke out and they found themselves locked in. Her boyfriend had some bottles of petrol in his pockets; he died. She had burns on 60% of her body, but survived.

Friends of the Street Children provides Angela with the comfort of knowing that some responsible adults will look out for her and the other kids on the streets at night. She also drops into the office during the day for the opportunity to be in a safe environment. This relationship can then progress to being rehabilitated and returned to her family, all being well.