Meet Hassan.

 

He is 12 years old, though he has no idea when his birthday is. He comes from the Kayunga district in central Uganda.

 

Current Status: Hassan continues to live on the streets of Jinja, waiting for someone who can reach out and help him. Could you be the person who can turn this young boy’s life around? Get in contact with us at S.A.L.V.E. and make Hassan’s dreams come true.

 

Background: Hassan’s problems began while he was still in his mother’s womb. His father was a strict Muslim man who had several wives and 14 children in total. Hassan’s mother was his new wife and Hassan was to be their first child together. However, the situation grew complicated when his father’s younger brother fell violently in love with Hassan’s mother. His feelings for her were so strong that everyone knew about it, including Hassan’s father. So when Hassan was born, the debate that had raged throughout his mother’s pregnancy was decided by his father; he rejected his son, saying that his younger brother was Hassan’s father, despite his mother claiming otherwise.

 

And so, Hassan was taken away from his mother and sent to live in his uncle’s house. Hassan’s uncle had always had problems with jiggers (worms) in his legs, and these worms continued to bury their way through his body, eventually leading to his death when Hassan was just 11 years old. Hassan’s mother wanted to finally take her son into her care after the burial. However, Hassan’s father wouldn’t hear of accepting him into his home, and still denied that Hassan was his child. Thus Hassan found himself with no-one to stay with or to care for him. He began to live on the streets at the tender age of 11 because he simply had nowhere else to go.

 

Education: Hassan has completed Primary Two and desperately wants to move on to Primary Three. He was last in school at the end of 2006 and is very eager to go back again. His favourite subject was SST (social studies). He loves to play football and supports Arsenal. He also loves to play the game draughts, which he enjoys because it challenges his mind.

 

Life on the street: Hassan’s life on the street began in Kampala, the capital of Uganda at the end of 2006. The capital of a country is supposed to be its pride and joy, and is often the place where new initiatives are trialled before being spread out to the rest of the country. Whenever the government makes a new policy to try to solve the problem of street children, they normally begin in Kampala. It was out of fear of the authorities who were starting to round up the street children in the capital that Hassan came to the streets of Jinja in 2007.

 

When asked to describe his life on the street, Hassan simply concluded that it is a bad life. He sleeps in an alleyway which has open sewage and fears catching diseases from it. Every morning he gets up and wanders all over the town searching for scrap metal or plastic bottles which he sells for a pittance so that he can buy food. If he can’t find anything to sell he will carry people’s heavy, stinking rubbish to the bins for them.

 

Just before Christmas 2007, Hassan returned to Kampala to try to find his family again in the hope that his father might take pity and allow him to come and live with them. However, on his way back home he was rounded up by the police as part of a new initiative to clean up the streets. They took him to Kampiringisa, a special secure school for street children. There are hundreds of street children kept there by the government, with specially trained staff to teach them. But there was a catch as they would only teach the children whose relatives gave them money for fees. The children that had just been picked up off the street were set to the task of collecting and carrying the firewood and water. For Hassan it was a welcome relief from street life as he was at last able to eat regularly and sleep at night without fear of unprovoked beatings; however he wished that he too could be taught lessons.

 

After he’d been there three months they took Hassan back to the streets, hoping to find relatives who would be willing to pay the fees so that he could go back to school. But this was a strange and hugely flawed system; if Hassan had relatives to pay fees, he would not be on the streets in the first place. Inevitably, there was no-one willing to put money towards his school fees, and so Hassan was left with no other option but to return to Jinja and to continue his life on the streets.

His life on the street has been a miserable one as he is regularly caught and beaten by the authorities. Under the influence of one of his friends on the streets he began to sniff paint thinner over a period of five months, in order to help numb his mind from his desperate situation. But since receiving education about the terrible effects of drugs from our Regional Director, Mike, in February, he has stopped this habit. It has now been over two months since Hassan has had any problems with drugs, and he is feeling much happier and more positive for it. He only wishes that he could stop the beatings that he is subject to whilst he lives on the street.

 

The worst thing about life on the streets: For Hassan the worst thing about life on the streets is the beatings that he receives. The authorities come round at night and beat any street child they find, as they see it as the best method to discipline and control them. If the child has a little bit of money left over at the end of the day they might be able to give them this to escape the beating, but it’s rare that a street child has money remaining as every penny goes towards trying to relieve the constant feeling of hunger. He also fears the beatings of the older, bigger street children who also try to take what little he has for themselves.

 

Future dreams: Hassan has big dreams. He has seen too many horrific injuries in his time on the streets, so he would like to become a doctor one day, enabling him to at last be able to cure them.