They are our own Sisters, Brothers, Sons & Daughters.....Only that fate has pushed them to the darkest corners of this life. STREET CHILDREN

Its a hardly discussed topic- Plight of Street Families, across the world. In Nairobi, there are over 50,000 street children living in deprolable conditions. A staggering 300,000 more living around the country. With such fugures, the number of children addicted to glue has the potential to be astronomically high.

It is easy to forget children; they won’t raise a militia, they won’t vote you out of office, they won’t affect general productivity if they die their small deaths in their filthy slums. This is what happens when families cannot cope and governments cannot or will not react; society accepts that children and their potential are allowed to wither away, drugged, abused, uneducated, unloved and forgotten.

In the following poem "The Street Laughter" Timothy Wideman Wainaina captures the imagination and plight of a street child who is not only lamenting but in a personal crisis trying to find his/her place in the society. Though I have never meet Tim Wideman, his poetry style captured my attention as you will find in the poem. Due to the humor and metaphor soo evident in the poem, I have changed its title from "Who Am I?" to " Street Laughter" with the authors permission.

Commentary by: MWANGI S. MUTHIORA.



THE STREET LAUGHTER
Am I the child of man,
That my uncircumcised shoulders
Should bear the burden of a man
My tender heart crucified
By endless quests for love?


Am I the child of woman,
That though still a virgin
My body has become a hive
Where drones hum and fuss
And only steal my honey?

Am I the child of beast,
That rogue dogs claw at me
And bark in hateful affection
While we grope for a stale piece
Discarded by a bloated glutton?

Am I the child of jungle
That the sun prides in roasting my back,
And morning frost in chewing my limbs,
As the rains pounds my bare head
And launders these tatters that gird my loins?

Am I the child of all
That you spit and curse and hit me
When I beg for a coin for a plate
Or a penny for a bottle at the cobbler’s
And kill me with the look of an eye?

Am I the child of none
That none should love me,
And ever wonder who bore this shame
This being with neither home nor kin
Whom am I?

(This is the lamentation –in monologue- of an unwanted child trying to find a place in a society in which he/she finds himself/herself out of place, uncared for, harassed and abused). All rights reserved to Author: Tomothy Wideman Wainaina.
You can reach him on: widemann5@gmail.com or his blog at Wideman World

Copyright Timothy Kiarii Wainaina 2010.(Wideman)

This is just another example of what crushing poverty will do to the priorities of a family, a government and a society. While Kenya is not the poorest African countries, there are too many in these countries who live in garbage dumps, slums with open sewers running outside their doors, huddle in doorways or out on the muddy sidewalks. In light of this, abandoning children to their fate on the streets of the city may seem like a necessary option for families stretched too thin; but how can this option be tolerated by the society at large? How is an 11-year old girl prostituting herself for the glue, it will take to forget, her hunger and cold not considered a priority for any government?
Commentary by: MWANGI S. MUTHIORA.

MWANGI S. MUTHIORA
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