National 8 (Spotlight Weekly)

Severe Chill

As winter deepens in the valley, street children find their daily life deteriorating

By NIRAJ POUDYAL

They hope it would not rain too much this winter. And they have good reason. Each night they sleep under the open sky, close to each other as much as possible to warm up their beautiful dreams of a sunny morning. If they are lucky, they get to sit close to a pile of burning wood or paper that makes their chilly and frosty evening warm and memorable.

But the merciless winter fog enters their body through the small pores of the cement bags they use as jackets and plastic bags that serve as caps. They purchase these clothing free from the garbage heaps on the dirty and discarded corners of the city. They dine on the footpaths and lunch under the trees. They manage to get their daily food either by stealing, begging or selling their tenderness as cheap labor.

Street Children : Lacking care

Then, black clouds gather over Kathmandu and fall as cold and ruthless water drops. This proves to be the blight of the dreams these young city dwellers - street children - have been seeing this winter.

While economists were relieved by the rainfall last week, hoping it would help boost agricultural production, street children, faraway from their remote villages and poor family, were stirring, blowing their hands and wandering, confused at the middle of the street. They were wondering where to go and find some hot food and warm shelter - at least for the rainy dark night.

One in the group planned to beg and another thought of stealing from the shop nearby. "We don't have any other way of getting food and clothing. And we cannot return to our village because it would add to the burden of our poor family," says one boy who has been roaming the streets of Kathmandu for the last three years.

Kale (name changed), 15, unable to tolerate the mental and physical torture of his father and stepmother, escaped from his village two and half years ago. He, too, dismisses any chance of his returning to his home village. Others have a more benign story. They rushed into the city with the hope of finding jobs so that they could support their poor family.

Whatever their tales, these street children are deprived of their rights to education, good nutrition and a happy childhood with their lovely parents. They consider their friends lucky to have landed jobs like tempo conductors, houseboys or dishwashers in restaurants. But they are unaware of the pledges the state and society had promised them but failed to deliver. They do not care about the exploitation of their labor by the urban rich. They even do not know why they are not going to school in the way their city counterparts are. Proper and regular health care is beyond their imagination and far from their expectation.

Why are they being ignored by the government and countless non-governmental organizations founded with the sole objective of improving the lives of children? Street children deserve an answer, perhaps more than anyone else. According to an estimate, there are about 5,000 street children in Nepal. The government has a separate ministry to look after the youngest members of society. Still, every torturous frigid night of winter comes as curse for these children.

If they continue to be neglected, the chilly winter nights are sure to make their kind hearts and tender minds criminal and rebellious. Time is running out for responsible members of society and the government to care for these children either by paving their way back to their home village or by providing them warm homes inside the city where they would not need to worry about the next winter rain.