Meet Moreen.

 

She’s 14 years old though she doesn’t know which month she was born in. She comes from outer Kampala, the capital city of Uganda.

 

Current Status: Moreen is now safe and well and, thanks to her new sponsors, she at last has a roof over her head after living for five months on the street. She is now looking forward to starting school and would like to send all of her thanks to her sponsors for believing in her and for turning her life around.

 

Background: Moreen never got the chance to get to know her parents. When she was only a year old her father died. Shortly after that her mother left her with her grandmother and never looked back, so Moreen had to live without both her parents from the age of just two years old. She is the second born of seven children, but as in many Ugandan families, her grandmother’s house was a dumping ground for the unwanted children of the family meaning that ten children ended up living there. It was a hard life for Moreen, forced to live with her grandmother, a woman who so obviously disliked her and shouldered her with the burden of looking after ten children. She used to abuse Moreen both physically and verbally whenever the mood took her, which was on a very regular basis.

 

However, the last straw for Moreen came when aged just thirteen, her grandmother tried to force her to get married. All Moreen wanted to do was to continue her studies. How could she be expected to marry a much older man who she’d never even met when she was still just a child herself? She took the only route out that she had, and ran away shortly after Christmas 2007. She came to Jinja in the hope of finding her dead father’s relatives after a kind neighbour gave her money for the bus, but she doesn’t know any of their names. Faced with no alternative and  no-one to help her, she began her life on the street.

 

Education: Moreen has attended school until the end of Primary Five. She loves to study and her favourite subject at school is English. She also loves to play netball whenever she gets the chance. It was the desperate desire to continue her education that was one of the main reasons she ran away from home and an unwanted marriage. Currently she has been out of school since the end of 2007.

 

Life on the street: Life on the streets is hard for any child, but this is especially so for girls. One thing many people comment on is how few girls you see living rough. This is not because there are fewer girls than boys on the street, but because they are often preyed upon by men who prowl the streets at night. For a street girl to survive she must use her wits to find some kind of shelter and escape this constant threat.

 

Moreen did just this when she arrived on the streets of Jinja. She turned to one of the safest places she could find, Kakira church. It is currently having building work done, so she can find an easy entrance through the unfinished walls, but once it’s completed her safe haven will be sealed off from her and she will have to take to the streets once more.

 

Everyday she wakes up at six a.m. when people start coming in to pray. She goes outside to wash her eyes, using some water from the well to wake herself up. and then her day must truly begin. She spends the whole day industriously going from door to door offering to wash clothes or to carry heavy jerry cans of water for people. In exchange she will either be given a small plate of food, or a little bit of money which she will use to try and buy herself dinner. After eating, she must go straight back to work to try to earn herself another morsel of food.

 

Every night by seven she returns to her sanctuary at the church, as the streets are a terrifying place for a girl, especially after dark. But she must wait for evening service to finish before she is finally able to shut her weary eyes and get some sleep. She feels lucky that she has the church as her place to sleep, as it offers her the safety and protection that few street children can claim. However, when they finish their building work she will have to go elsewhere, and she fears what might happen to her then.

 

The worst thing about life on the streets: For Moreen, like many other street children, hunger is the worst thing about her life on the streets. Day in day out, hunger gnaws away at her, but no matter how hard she works the little she earns is simply never enough to satisfy her cravings. With every hour of the day her endless hunt for food must continue.

 

Future dreams: Moreen is a very gentle, caring soul. She dreams one day of being able to complete her education so that she can become a nurse, and can take care of others when they most need it.