The issue of child labour and for that matter the exploitation of the female child especially, sometimes appeara as tall tales or gives you the bandwagon effect of shouting with the crowd “this is bad it must be stopped!”, but having a personal encounter is another ball game altogether.
Somewhere in the middle of last year I went home from work at about 6.40pm to find a girl about 8 years peddling oranges in front of the main gate to our apartment. So I asked who she was and why she was sitting there at that hour of the evening. My two ten year olds quickly retorted “Mummy she is our friend and we buy oranges from her every evening” so as courtesy would have it I asked how she was doing and went in doors. I came home a few days later and there was the same girl sitting comfortably at her usual spot with a few oranges on her tray, her eyes calling out at me for help as if to say “please do not drive me away”. Reading in between the lines the children say to me “Mummy won’t you have oranges?” “No” I said “Mummy please buy the rest of her oranges” I thought twice about it and asked them to have it and pay for it.
Later that evening, I started questioning my girls and got to know a few things about their latest fancy. I sensed that even as children they could feel the girl’s lack of love and basic desires. So at our next encounter I sat with them and started chit chatting. I offered to go and see her parents and officially ask for permission for her to come over and play at her leisure but she vehemently said NO and that she would be beaten to pulp if her mother found out she comes to play with my girls.
So I started thinking? What do you do if you come home and found a young girl with eyes crying out for love and help but very reluctant or better still restrained from getting help? How does one offer to help without being too intrusive and how does one make her good intentions known without raising people’s suspicions?
Well I have not found answers to those questions yet but it has moved me into a process of critically examining the situation of the girl child. For example I have started taking very serious note of the child labour situation in the country. I have been taking keen interest in the number of young girls selling ice water at the Nima junction in the evenings sometimes as late as 8.30pm weaving in between vehicles with some of them being as young as 7 years. One wonders when they would have time to rest and glance at their books if they are in school and if they have books at all. One wonders the diverse types of violations they have to suffer just to make ends meet. One wonders what type of policies are available to protect these girls and if the people we have queued up to vote for (sometimes for hours) even have these young girls on their web designed radar screens, screens which are often too complex for mere humans such as myself to understand.
The children of today have their childhood stolen away by a complex mirage of things. Do not think only about deprivation, even in rich homes the television for example has stolen not only the childhoods of children but the children themselves away from their families. Careers of parents have deprived children from enjoying their childhoods etc. So you see, it is a complex web of issues that needs to be thought about fast and hard.
Anyway while you are still pondering I also have some serious strategizing to do about that 8 year old girl whose eyes continue to cry out to me for help even though presently I am at my wits ends as to how to offer that support
Beatrice Boakye-Yiadom
Acting Grants Manager
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment