STREET CHILDREN

From Adevarul Dec. 6, 2005
By: Marcel

STREET CHILDREN, A BIG PROBLEM

Hungry, covered in filth and frozen by the cold, thousands of children live on the street. Theydon't know the joy that comes from a visit by Santa Claus. In 1998-1999, the number of streetchildren was said to be 2,100. But the latest statistics from the organization "Save the Children"shows the number of children has gone over 2,500. The majority of them are found in Bucharest,Brasov, Iasi, Craiova, Galati, Bacau, Buzau and Ploiesti. More than 30% of the street children havebeen on the streets longer than 5 years, while 25% of them have lived this life style for less thana year.

FOUR CATEGORIES OF STREET CHILDREN

On the streets of the larger cities in Romania, there are four categories of street children:children who only live on the street and have no ties to their family or to any institution,children work on the street but who generally return daily to their families, young people who liveon the street (usually these are the group leaders of the street children and those who make therules for the group and who offer 'protection' and support for the other members), children who livewith their parents on the streets.

I'M HUNGRY FOR CHOCOLATE

Full of foam and froth from the soap, yet still black from filth, and sopping wet from head to foot,Marian Iosif washes windshields at an intersection in Piata Regie. He looks askance at us with anevil glance "What do you want with me? Are you one of those who buys children and after that killsthem so you can take their liver?" He's gone through all kinds of trickery and knows about people.He is 10 years old but he has a furrowed face which is soiled with something shiny and silver:Aurolac (glue). From time to time he inhales from a bag on which are written the words, "Agfa ColorFilm".

It's become cold outside, but Marian is only wearing flip-flops. His feet are cyanotic and swollen.However, he doesn't feel the cold. He says he's used to it. He knows how to read and write. He knowsmoney, learns quickly, and he's not stupid. "Winter's coming," he says with an air of maturity. "Idon't know what I'm gonna do this winter. All the sewers are full of water from the rains andfloods. The dampness goes all the way to your bones. You know how it is? You can't sleep even ifyou're warm. There are swarms and swarms of mosquitoes and they eat you alive." Marian told us thatlast winter he slept in a sewer which ran along the bank of the Dimbovita River. It was warm and quiet and he heard only the running water in the hot water pipes which were as big around as his body. He made it nice there. He put up some ads from the Billa grocery store and from Carrefour, he had an icon with the Virgin Mary, and a pocket-knife to protect himself. He doesn't remember whether he ever received a gift in his life or not. "Two years ago I ran away from home with my brother, but he separated from me and now he stays over by the railroad station. From that time until now we've lived only in the sewers. We are barely away from Craiova. We left because our mother married a guy who beat us with a whip. We haven't seen her since then nor do we remember what her face looks like. It's better on the street. I get up when I want. I eat if I have something. And then I go off to beg. I wash windshields, I sweep the floors of small shops, carry goods, etc. I manage. And I haven't starved yet from hunger." At the moment, these children are sleeping under a large block of cement which was thrown into a waste area near a major intersection. That's Marian's house and others' house as well. Marian says that Santa has never brought him any gifts. I've never had a Christmas tree or a new toy. When workers decorated a center where he stayed he shouted for joy. Bucharest is his -- from one end to the other. "If I had the chance, I'd write Santa Claus and beg him: Dear Santa, I have a big craving for chocolate. I haven't had any to eat since I was little. And I have one more request: please get the cats and the mosquitoes out of this sewer so that I have some place to sleep this winter. Thank you."

BEATEN AND STARVING

The majority of street children are beaten, insulted, threatened, starving and under-developed for their age and they do not get enough nourishment nor sufficient sleep. They usually do not have a roof over their heads. These are the conclusions of a study entitled "A Rapid Evaluation of Street Children Who Work" which was done by the organization "Save the Children". According to this study, the most common activities of these little ones are begging, loading and unloading goods, washing windshields or cars, selling newspapers, or collecting garbage. On average the children work six hours on the street everyday all year. Their educational level is very low. Approximately 20% have never been to school, 30% are illiterate, 40% know how to read and write a little bit. Of those who left school, 18% left around the age of 12. The street boys are three times as numerous as girls. 70.4% of the street children are between the age of 14 and 18. These results come from a study by the organization "Save the Children". Of those questioned, more than 90% are permanently on the streets. The boys are more numerous than the girls because the girls are more vulnerable on the streets, they cannot do hard work and usually their families prefer to use them in housework. More than 60% of street children come from families with a lot of children, usually more than 4. According to the study, 57% are Romanian and 40% are Gypsies. The data show that the risk of ending up on the street, whether accompanies by a family or not, are in fact greater for Gypsy children.

According to the study done by the Save the Children organization, the average age at which a street child begins sexual relations is 12.5 years, which is well below the national average of 17 years for boys and 19 years for girls. Of those questioned, more than 42% said that they began sexual relations at ages between 6 and 12 years, while another 58% at 14 years. Thus the risk of various diseases is very great.

WHY DO CHILDREN END UP ON THE STREET?

The majority of children say they ended up on the street by their own initiative and only 12% of them were thrown out by their parents. The usual causes for ending up in the street are alcoholic parents, negligence, physical abuse, sexual abuse and emotional distress. Many of the children are sent to beg by their parents while approximately 10% come from orphanages.BEGGING IS THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOMEBegging is the primary source of income for street children. More than 55% of them get their money through this practice. About 20% do day work, while 9% wash cars. 7.4% said that they obtained their money from stealing and 1.5% said that they obtained their money from prostitution. Because they want to get money, the children do not relax very much. For 11.9% of them, free time is synonymous with drugs or stealing. The usual place for such relaxation is on the street. Only 5.9% of the street children go to an orphanage for rest.

WE ARE PRESIDENT BASESCU'S NEIGHBORS

Some of these children are spending their ninth Christmas in the open air only a few meters from the fence of the Presidential Palace in Bucharest. At this location there are 8 people. There are 6 children who are between the ages of 3 months and 11 years who are shivering because of the cold. Their parents, Catita Afrim and Constantin Bobi Flueras have made this "house" and covered it with plastic and old clothes. It's a hut. Instead of a door, the hut has rags. On a nearby tree, wet clothes are hanging. They were washed yesterday by the children's mother in a trough with holes. For 9 years they have been on the street and some of the children were even born there in the field. Only later did Catita get to the hospital. The woman is 34 years old and is crazy with worry. Only her man, to whom she is not legally married, works. They live on his salary. At 6 in the morning when he leaves for work, it is so cold that it freezes the tears his eyes. He doesn't want to get out from under the blanket. But when he looks at the small hunched forms, his heart throbs painfully. He goes out hungry and comes back in the evening broken. All that awaits him is a potato broth in a beat up pot. He wolfs down the broth with the rest of them. Catita told us with moist eyes, "We stayed for a while in a park. It was summer. After that we moved to a ghetto in Ferental. For 2 years we slept in the field near Bolentin. Several months we rented, we had a television, my, how the children watched it. We were no longer able to pay the rent so we returned here. My soul is black with anger that no one looks at us! See, Christmas is coming and we find ourselves under the stars!" Catita says that every year when Saint Nicholas is to come, she teaches the children to clean their shoes and put them outside in front of the door. Before lying down, the six little ones arrange their misshapen and mismatched shoes in front of the hovel, still hoping that St. Nicholas will pass their neighborhood. But St. Nicholas keeps forgetting to stop there. In the morning, Catita's children find little shoes frozen solid and made wet by stray dogs seeking shelter in the area. Then she smiled and told them that they weren't good and that's why St. Nicholas passed them by. They believed it. And at Christmas, as miserable as they were, they wouldn't give up until they got a little Christmas tree which they decorated with whatever they had -- the foil from chocolate that they received from charity, little colored papers found in the garbage, a little doll without a leg, three buttons, a few plastic flowers. When it rains, their clothes are all wet and the palace of rags gets wet like cardboard. Three of the little girls go to school daily, helped by the organization Save the Children. The ones who stay home loaf around all day begging from cars at intersections, to the desperation of Catita who by no means wants to see them there. In one second the little children all go out of the tent in a row, like ants, some with no shirt and barefoot, some with slippers put on backwards. Carmenuta, the 3 month old girl, laughs and punches with her little hands. The boys pull a gray tomcat by the tail and then scuttle away to some bushes. They appear with a moth eaten stuffed fox, thrown away in the garbage by who knows who. They ride it, pull its tail and kiss its snout. Sometimes Catita messes up their names because there's alot of them; "Well, there's Lavinia, ahhh...Adelina, Camelia, Mihaita, Carmenuta (the little one) and .......oh brother, there's one more." She looks around the 'house' and realizes that a little girl is missing. "Hey, where in the world is that little rascal?!" screams the woman. Toward the evening the little one shows up too, barefoot, full of snot but happy, licking a lollipop victoriously. She holds it in her little dirty hands like a trophy. Catita puts her hands on her head: "You crossed the road again, you little rebel! How many times have I told you that I better not catch you doing that, because I'll crack you!"