Wanfunguriye. Literally translated as give me something to eat in street children’s jargon was the first word he murmured in a low voice. Dressed in a thread bear t-shirt that has lost its original colour, the barefoot child hovers around a supermarket targeting the evening rush-hour shoppers.

I met 10-year-old Aimable Dushimimana at Kicukiro, Sonatube at around 7pm on Monday standing outside a supermarket. After giving him Rwf1,000, we headed to a nearby makeshift restaurant, where he opened up about his heart wrenching story.

Dushimimana run away from home in Nyakabanda sector after prolonged abuse by his own father.

"My mother died three years ago when I was seven. I stayed with my father until last year when he remarried. However, my step mother used my own father against me, and he started beating me every day over lies told by my step-mother,” the street hardened child said in a low tone.

Dushimimana added that he endured the torture for a long time until December last year, when he fled to the street.

Nyabugogo, Nyamirambo, Kisementi, KicukiroSonatube and some parts of Kacyiru have lately become spots for street children like Dushimimana.

They beg, look filthy, fight on the street and indulge in narcotics. Some of them have taken on the pick pocketing habit and snatching people’s personal belongings like phones and handbags. They sleep in drainage pipes, and use a piece of cardboard as a mattress without a blanket.

For Dushimimana, this is a life he never wished for; "I sleep on verandas or hang around bars that work the whole night in Nyamirambo. When I am not sleeping, I’m begging for money to survive.

Jean Marie Kalimba, an 18-year-old orphan ran away from his foster home last year allegedly over being mistreated. Kalimba was among the children who were put in foster homes as part of government policy to phase out orphanages in the country.

"I was in Mpore PEFA, an orphanage located in Kicukiro District before it closed. My foster family was very kind to me at first, but towards the end of September last year, after staying with them since May 2013, they started mistreating me. I became their maid; I would do all the house work while their biological children sat around the house.”

Kalimba said that in December, his foster mother slapped him but he brushed it off as a one-off."But with time it became unbearable, the conditions worsened and I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked the maids around the neighborhood in Kanombe, whether it was possible for me to get work somewhere else. Unfortunately, I couldn’t and had to end up on the street,” Kalimba said.

He developed hatred for foster homes because he felt like that was the general trend in foster homes.

"I will survive on the street doing casual work, sleeping on a cardboard, until things work out for me,” he said.

To understand the life of street children, I visited Nyabugogo, which has notoriously become a habitat for street kids.

On reaching Nyabugogo, I quickly figured out that the street kids in this area were kind of dangerous because they were sniffing on drugs and smoking cigarettes. To get their attention, I talked to one of them who I later discovered is the ring leader.

Dasmas Nsengiyumva aka Mutware, as his crew refers to him, has been on the streets since 2013. After handing him a two thousand francs note, he dully agreed to sit down with me and talk.

Nsengyumva says that he came to streets because of unbearable poverty at his home in Kibungo district. At the age of 15, he has seen more than what most adults have.

"I was staying with my mother in Kibungo district but life was difficult. By the time I left home, we were three children and I hope it’s still the same because I have not had from my family since then.”

He boarded a truck that was carrying bananas to Kigali and ended up in Remera where he embarked on begging to survive.

He later heard tales about Nyabugogo being the best place to survive as a street child.His first days in Nyabugogo were terrifying.

"I used to hang around garages in Gatsata and would go to restaurants and beg for left overs which we still do only that now we are a group,” he said.

At night he would sleep on verandas or outside one of the garages. Later, one of the guys in the group, Abdul Nshuti, joined him after he left home because his grandmother could no longer take care of him.

The group is currently made up of five boys and they sleep in one of the garages in Gatsata.

"With time, people in the garages got used to me and they would send me to do errands for them. They trusted me and later, they gave me a spot in the garage where to sleep. I survived by getting tips from running errands and sometimes they would also buy me food,” he added.

Although Nsengyumva said that they don’t steal, people around Nyabugogo have a different story. Most people said that the increase in the number of street kids has given rise to petty theft.

Eduige Karera who runs a restaurant in the area said, "These kids are pickpockets. They snatch ladies’ handbags and run under the bridge or in the garages. This usually happens late in the evening.”

Josephine Uwamariya who works with her husband in a spare parts shop also said that these kids target people rushing home or fighting for taxis in the park.

"My friend’s bag was snatched by these kids. She wasn’t able to recover the bag because these kids know most corners in this area. And when this happens, people just look on,” Uwamariya said.

What happened to orphanages?

Elia Munezero, the coordinator of Gisimba Orphanage Centre, says relocation of children from orphanages to foster families was a government programme under National Children Care Reform aimed at helping children grow up in a normal family setting.

"Together with National Commission for Children, a team of specialised people and social workers was put together to identify these children, the date they came to the orphanages, the places where they were from, the reason they came to the orphanages, among other things,” he says.

This study was meant to know the children and find them appropriate families, especially re-uniting them with relatives. Some definitely didn’t have families but the team tried their best to get them into a family and live a normal life.

"The younger children were adopted and the older ones, especially those who had graduated from senior six, were put together to start a family independently and were provided with food and rent,” Munezero says.

He says for the case of Gisimba Orphanage, no child has returned yet but Munezero says it is possible that children have deserted foster homes for different reasons.

"If a child is in a home that gives him inadequate care, that could make him run away,” Munezero says.

He also notes that when a child is turned into a maid or houseboy and is denied time to go to school, they will not stay in such an environment.

National Commission for Children reacts

Côme Sinayitutse, Children Rights Protection and Promotion Officer at the National Commission for Children, says that the main reasons that take children to the streets are family conflicts and poverty.

"We are aware that there’s still a problem of street children and we are working on it.However I can’t say for a fact that there’s an increase because there’s no recent research that has been conducted. The last research conducted in 2012 showed that among the 1080 street children interviewed, 83 per cent said they were on the streets because of poverty while 42 percent said it was due to family conflicts,” Sinayitutse explained.

Through the National Commission for Children (NCC), a programme "Tumurerere Mu Muryango (TMM) was created to find foster homes for children and follow them up.

"We also set up street children centres that are tasked with getting children off the streets as well as the InshutiZ’Umuryango programme that also closely monitors foster homes. There are some cases of child mistreatment that have been reported but they were sorted. As for cases of children who end up on the streets after running away from foster homes, they are there but few. However, as NCC, we are tirelessly working to ensure that every child grows up in a good environment and with all the required essentials for good childhood growth,” Sinayitutse says.

Additional reporting by Patrick Buchana

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How can we curb the rise in street kids?

Colombe Akiwacu

Guiding parents on how to take care of their children is imperative. Furthermore, family planning should also be given priority. People should only give birth to children they can manage in order to have a more promising future. Eventually, kids on the street will be history.

Gilbert Hategikimana

I think the government should take the initiative to find proper homes for those kids. Some of them are orphans with nowhere to go. Finding a secure shelter and giving them education would be a noble thing to do and in return, this would reduce their growing number on streets.

Anet Kayitesi

In my opinion, if they are orphans, their relatives should protect them instead of abandoning them. Also, girls should avoid unwanted pregnancies because most of them are too poor to manage their kids, and this is how some end up on the streets. It should be everyone’s responsibility to advocate for institutions and families for these kids.

Aggrey Mukama

Campaigns promoting awareness on the dangers of the growing number of street kids should be encouraged. Furthermore, the government should educate its citizens about the risk of unplanned pregnancies to the development of the country. I have hope that this would reduce this problem.

Ephraim Mporanye

The government should set up schools or institutions with activities like drama, traditional dancing, cultural games that will keep them occupied and forget about being on streets.

Jacky Uwera

Parents should spend enough time with their children and teach them the outcome of bad peer groups. Furthermore, the kids on the street should be taken to school where they can be taught how to read and write and also learn other technical skills that will help them in the future.

Also, the government should legalise abortion for cases such as rape and defilement which might make the girl hate the child because of what she went through; this is how we get street kids.

Compiled by Dennis Agaba