The best way I know to do this is to tell you their stories. A little more from the life stories they shared with me. Some of the details are kind of vague. Solomon didn’t even know how old he was. Eighteen or nineteen, he said when I asked. But these are their lives. We’ll start with Solomon.
Solomon was born to an unmarried woman. Because the child was out of wedlock, the new mother left her baby with her mother, Solomon’s grandma. This is the woman who raised Solomon. Or tried to. Somehow, she managed to send Solomon to school up to P3 (American second grade). Solomon told me he knows how to read and write. He has two sisters and a brother.But at the age of 13, Solomon lost the most important influence on his life. His grandmother died. Suddenly, he had no one to take care of him. This would also be around the end of the worst of the LRA abductions of children. Meaning: The northern half of the country was in shambles. Schools were struggling to restart. Many people still lived in IDP camps. Structure, stability, and opportunities for a young unwanted teenage boy were nonexistent.
So, Solomon did the only thing he could think of. He went to the streets. While living homeless in Lira, he got connected with CRO (Child Restoration Outreach), the ministry Beatrice is a part of. CRO works hard to reconnect street children with their biological parents. So, they took Solomon to see his father.
But Solomon’s father had remarried. In Ugandan culture, the family is very important. But there is often also a lot of jealousy and animosity towards step-children when a parent remarries. Solomon’s step-mother had no use for this teenage boy who wasn’t hers. He wasn’t wanted. She rejected him. Solomon used the word “abused.” This can mean anything from forcing a child to do all the work in the house to yelling matches to withholding necessities to physical beatings. Whatever it was, Solomon decided it wasn’t worth it and left.
He’s lived on the streets now for six years.
He’s been arrested twice by police who come in on random nights and round up all the street kids they can find. The children are left in prison for 2-4 weeks and then released. No one in the community cares when they go in, and no one cares when they come back out.
All three of the boys I talked to had spent time in jail.
Where is Solomon today? Today he is recovering from a beating he received from the Lira community. I asked for an update from Beatrice, and she said this:
“Thank you so much for your humble prayers you always [pray] for to God for CRO (Child Restoration Outreach) children and for me and my family dear, I greatly appreciate you. Well the boys have been dis- charged from the hospital though still very week and they don't have proper homes/ place to stay in as they fully recover and no one take responsibility of taking care of them dear. That's a very great challenge . . . maybe there should be a home for them that can keep them for time being as their home [biological families] are being traced.
However, those boys are still in pain although dis- charged from the hospital, no food, medical care, clothing among others while on the streets . . .”
So far, this is all that has happened in Solomon’s story.
Can that change?
