The Street Boys of Freetown

Eight o’clock out on the sports field, standing underneath the cotton tree I waited for Francis to pick me up on his motorbike. My host family’s house is on the hillside near the top of the city. We would be riding down to the market, at the bottom of Freetown, to speak with boys between the ages of nine and fourteen years-old who were living on the street. I was connected with Don Bosco Fambul, an organization working directly with homeless children, through the NGO coordinator I had been working with since my arrival in Freetown.

Ever since I was a teenager myself, I have been interested in working in the field of human trafficking. By the time I started grad school, I knew that I wanted anti-trafficking work to be a continual aspect of my career. At the end of the first year of grad school, I had honed my focus towards the sex trafficking of migrant children. However, even with several trafficking related internships under my belt, I had never had direct contact with children who were being or had been trafficked. In the US for the most part, if I wanted to work with survivors of trafficking, especially youths, I would need a social work degree or related training. But this was Sierra Leone, so when the opportunity to talk with street kids arose, I quickly accepted the opportunity.

We arrived at the market close to nine. The boys were just finishing up a game of soccer while a few shop keepers were making their way home. Don Bosco has been working in Freetown for over twenty years, so there’s a general amount of trust and respect among the kids and social workers. Many of the older boys who have been through the program introduce younger boys to the social workers. In order to register for the boys' program, a boy must sign a contract with the social worker, stating that they are ready to get off the street and reconnect with their biological or foster family. The program is heavily dependent on the boys’ willingness to go through rehabilitation and stay off the streets. Signing the contract holds the boys morally accountable for themselves and provides them with a sense of personal responsibility and respect. Many other programs for street children will pick up the kids on the street and put them through a two-week to two-month course. Basic needs are met, but many of these children return back to the streets. 

As we sat in the market and the night got darker, more boys and a few girls came to mingle and talk with the social workers. As a white American woman working in Sierra Leone, I usually get one of three reactions from children, regardless of if they are homeless or accompanied by a parent. There’s the wide-eyed stare of amazement, shrieking of oporto oporto (white person) followed by giggles, or begging for food and a plane ticket to the states.  Initially, many of the boys came over to me to show various injuries, skin tight stomachs, and tattered clothing. They would whisper in my ear about needing money for food or school. In places like Sierra Leone, Americans are seen as walking handouts, a perspective that has been sustained through years of unnecessary aid dumping and chronic poverty. Once the boys figured out that I didn’t have any cash or food on me, conversation turned to topics that most teenage boys are interested in. We talked about soccer teams, things they missed about school, our hidden talents, which boy was dating which girl, if all women in America have as much hair as me, if I was married and with how many kids. Older boys rapped about girls and school, showed off their breakdance and soccer skills, and talked about how life would be better in America. The much younger boys shyly sat next me, occasionally building up the courage to touch my arm or my hair.

After the market, Francis and I walked through the streets towards the slum dwellings where most of the kids slept. My job for Don Bosco has been to come up with new project ideas for the boys’ program. As Francis and I slowly made our way down slippery trash and rat ladened steps, he told me about the challenges this type of social work presents to both the program and the workers. Resources are always limited in these types of programs and in aid programs in general. Social workers deal with burnout in their own ways, often overworked and overwhelmed by the emotional baggage that is accompanied by their work. If children are able to be reconnected with their parents, there are little economic opportunities for parents to feed their children and keep them in school. From a population perspective, the city of Freetown is quickly growing and is set to double by 2028. Having met with the Mayor earlier that day and hearing her four-year plan for development, I noticed that tackling the issue of street children was never mentioned nor were any street children NGOs represented at the meeting. For social workers like Francis, the work is taxing and the problems are overwhelming. Even with all of these challenges known to Don Bosco, their multiple programs addressing various issues with street children continue strong. 

The slums that the kids were living in were clustered structures comprised of brick and tin materials. The small encampment lay next to a river filled with trash, surrounded by massive trash bags that the kids could pick through to find plastic and glass to sell. We hung around outside of the encampment, talking with kids whose faces were lit only by the butt end of a cigarette. I met a young man who had been living on the street since he was seven years old. He was twenty now, and one of the oldest kids in the group. It’s almost impossible to imagine living in those conditions for so long and surviving to the age of twenty. This young man was soft spoken, kept the younger kids from digging through my bag, and interested in talking about what he wanted to study if he could go back to school.

Nearing the end of our night we registered a twelve-year-old boy for the program that would start in two weeks. A few days before the start of the program, Francis and his team will take these boys off the streets and introduce them to the structure of the boys’ shelter. The boys’ immediate medical needs will be met by the volunteer nurse and medical staff, they’ll get three meals a day, option of continuing school or a trade, and start group therapy. With lack of familial support and virtually zero government intervention, these boys have to rely on themselves to finish the program and try to finish their education. To put all of this responsibility on a child as young as nine-years-old seems unfathomable, especially from a western perspective where it is not uncommon for a child to rely on their parents well past the age of adulthood. 

As we pulled away on the bike saying our last goodnights to the boys, I watched a boy called “Street Virgin” wobble with his eyes closed, virtually falling asleep where he was standing. Whether it was from extreme exhaustion or a side effect taking too large of a dose of opioids, I wouldn’t know that night. When the boys enter the program, many of them must suffer through unassisted withdrawal during the initial days. Tramadol abuse, a synthetic opioid, is high among the homeless youth population in the capital and easily attained from pharmacists. Unlike other opioids such as methadone and fentanyl, Tramadol is not internationally regulated, hence it is cheap and readily available for users. 

As we headed back up the hill on Francis’ bike, the bike loudly sputtering under the weight of two people, I reflected on the scenes I had witnessed that night. A boy no older than sixteen pointing out his two children, another boy by the name of Joe Crack rapping about school girls, little girls as young as four or five playing hopscotch next to one of the remaining functioning street lights, kids snuggled up together on the wooden market platforms, the welts and cuts the younger boys had attained from fighting, and girls who had yet to start puberty with painted faces and short dresses peaking behind pink and blue curtains, illuminated by dim blue lights. 

When I talk to people back home about what I want to do with my career, I usually get two responses. Either individuals will commend me on my valiant humanitarian efforts to save the world or they’ll be so uncomfortable with the topic that they will merely say “you know that’s very hard work” and move on to a new topic. The idea that I want to “save the world” is offensive to the population and countries I work in and only supports this unrealistic idea that developing countries and their inhabitants need saving. I asked Francis that night what drove him to become a social worker for street kids. “As stupid as it sounds, I’ve always seen social work as a calling. I always liked spending time with kids as a young adult and I knew I had the capacity to do the work.” For myself, these past several years of research, internships, degrees, and field excursions to Southeast Asia and West Africa, solidified in me my desire and ability to continue this career path. I, like Francis, have always seen human trafficking as a professional calling, as stupid as it may sound.