Of Super Glue Highs, Darfur Lows, and Yet Another Problem ala Sudan...

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*Sniff...ahhhh*
In my experience in Sudan, I have grown accustomed to seeing filthy 'street rats' begging, but more often demanding money, wearing clothes that look like oil rags and that barely give them a decent cover. If you walk down to the market here in Nyala, as a white person, you will be accosted by some scrawny child who hounds you until you either give him what he wants, or someone in the market pulls him away from you. Sometimes as we sit at some local restaurant, children will come up to the table to beg.

Most of the time the preferable action is to simply ignore them. It sounds harsh, I know, but the tragedy is that if one of these children is given money they will run off and buy glue and the cheap high that it offers. While I was still in Khartoum, I was eating at a restaurant late in the evening, and a boy of about 14 years came up to our table and asked for money. We offered him food. He said, "No, give me money." I was rather shocked as I had never seen a street kid turn down food before. The kid was high, probably coming down, and he wanted money to prolong the experience. When he refuses food, what do you do?

There is a small kid in the Nyala markets that we've all encountered on several occasions. He is probably seven years old, wirey as a paper clip, and the most persistent beggar I have ever seen. Aaron and I were in the market shortly after I arrived and this kid came up and began to demand money, mixing arabic with the only english that he knew, "Adeeni money." (give me money). He does not have pants, only a shirt that falls halfway down his thighs, and his face and nose is crusted with dried glue and mucus. His hair is caked in dirt, his hands are the same with glue and grime, and his eyes have a wild flare. He grabbed my arm as I walked away, and tried to pull me back. For such a runt he was surprisingly strong, but I pulled away and kept walking. He grabbed me again, all the while demanding money. Finally someone in the market grabbed him, and he immediately began screaming as though his fingernails were being plucked...clever kid. We see him all over Nyala.

Darfur has its many problems, deadly tribal feuding, full-scale military conflict, banditry, rape, oppression of women, etc., and to add to the sad list is a generation of street children stuck on glue. It is a sad reality, and one that is generated by the lack of abilities of families to care for their children, a direct result of being forced from their villages and barely being able to pull enough resources to keep hunger at bay.

While it is a good thing that there are homes such as the one described in the article, and that they are saving children from a living hell, they are not the solution to the problem. The sad reality is that that home is full and will always be full as long as the deep rooted issues of this society and culture are not addressed from a grass-roots level. I am not naive enough to say that I have an answer, I wish I did, as I know that you cannot take societal traits that run centuries deep and turn them over with a simple solution.