Violence and sexual abuse within the home are among the main reasons children run away to live on the streets, according to a report, the State of the World’s Street Children, published by a coalition of charities.
In Ethiopia, an estimated 150,000 children live on the streets. The story of Genet, now living in a safehouse in Addis Ababa, is similar to those of many such children, especially girls.
No images of Genet are included to protect her identity.
My troubles began when I was 14 years old and my mother became too ill to care for my younger sister and me.
We were sent to live with a family as their domestic labourers.
We were both subject to frequent beatings and were not allowed to go to school.
A year later we were taken by our grandmother to live with a distant male relative elsewhere in Addis.
We were told our mother had died and this would now be our home.
It had been horrible with the family we had been living with before and I hoped the new family would be kinder to us now that our mother was gone.
But I was forced to go to bed with the male relative who we had been sent to live with and a woman in the household frequently beat us both.
I was pretty sure that the man was also sexually abusing my 11-year-old sister too. After two months I ran away but my younger sister was too frightened to come with me.
I ended up in the house of a family friend who took me in but they demanded that I pay my way by working as their domestic servant.
After being beaten and verbally abused, I decided to take my chances on the streets.
I find it very difficult to talk about my time on the streets of Addis. I survived there as best I could for over two months. I was often very hungry.
Other girls I met living and working on the street told me about the Drop-in Centre for street children operated by the Forum for Street Children.
It took a lot of courage to go there for help as I found it very difficult to trust adults.
But when I told the community workers there what had happened to me they immediately gave me a place in their safe home for girls.
I am now 16, I have started school again and I am being trained at a local health centre as a janitor so I will be able to support myself when the time comes to leave the safe home.
I am desperate to see my sister again. They tell me she has managed to escape from the abusive household we were in and is now living with our grandmother in her home village.
When I grow older I want to help other children in the same situation as me.
2 thoughts on “Genet’s story: A life on the streets – BBC”
I’m moved by the courage and strength of this unfortunate young girl. It’s a tragedy that there aren’t the sort of children welfare protection groups in Ethiopia that some of us who live in the West are accustomed to.
Although I realize that the need to monitor and report the crimes of the Woyane should remain at the forefront, I also hope that many NGOs that advocate for and help abused emerge in most major cities in Ethiopia.
The violation of children’s innocence and wellbeing at the hand of private tyrants is no less a crime than the on-going crimes of the depreciable crimes Meles and his gang of thugs.
We all Ethiopians are determined to bring the weyanne and shabya criminal to our justice system soon.
Among from the many plans that Shabya and TPLFweyanne bandits had while they were in nakfa caves was that to completely destroy the social fabric of Ethiopia. Wasting the lives of sisters, brothers, and children was one of the main goals of these criminal families.
Weyanne and shabya agents brought hiv/aids virus into Ethiopia and spread it like wilde fire. This was the greatest crime that these criminals committed against our society.
The story of Genet is just one of the millions and millions of horror stories of our children.
The time, of course, that fateful day where weyanne and shabya crime families would be brought to absolute justice is not far.
Death to shabya!!!
Death to weyanne!!!!!!!