Home at lastBy Serene Assir Iman is unlike most other girls at the Young Street Mothers’ Centre. At 15 she is childless, though she has faced horrifying physical and sexual abuse rendered all the more tragic because of her young age. She has also spent relatively little time living on the streets at any one stretch. “Rather, I would make the street my home for a couple of weeks, and then return home,” she says. “I haven’t spent enough time on the street to even make friends.” Alone on the streets, she lived in a constant state of vulnerability and fear. Quietly, she confesses she has been raped many times while on the streets. More often the assaults were very public. Asked whether nobody took notice, she replied with cynicism tainted by pain. “On the contrary: if one man saw another assault me, he would wait until I was alone again, and then attack and rape me himself,” she said. Whenever she became exhausted from the horror she experienced on the streets, she would return home to her mother and her brothers. She is the youngest of her siblings. “After my father died, they started to treat me very badly. The first time I decided to leave home, it was after my maternal cousin raped me. My mother supported me for a while, but then after that, she started to invite him over for meals and treated him just fine. I felt so betrayed and unloved,” she explains. “My cousin is supposed to take care of me. Surely my mother is supposed to love me.” Iman is a relative newcomer at the Young Street Mothers’ Centre supported by Ann Kathrin Linsenhoff- UNICEF Foundation, and has therefore not yet been able to take full advantage of the workshops and activities it offers the girls. But she already feels at home. “My mother knows I am living here. She comes to visit once a week. She prefers that I live here than live on the streets, and so do I,” she says. “It’s not that I don’t ever want to see her. I still love her, in spite of everything. But over here, I feel like I can get on with my life. I receive the love and care that I need. Already, I feel the girls are my sisters. The social workers are my fathers and mothers.” Like many other girls who have been deprived protection, Iman barely knows how to read and has joined the centre’ literacy classes. “I know I can recover my dignity, if only I get the chance. I know right from wrong, and I will grow to be strong. That’s why I want to stay here,” she says, with a faint smile. “Maybe then, when I am stronger, I can get a job and take care of myself.” The Young Street Mothers’ Centre established in 2005 welcomes girls who have faced abuse on the street regardless of whether or not they have borne children. It also provides the girls with the safety that they need in order to learn new skills, including reading, carpet-weaving, candle-making and hairdressing. These are skills that they can go on to use in their later lives, once they are strong enough to be independent again.
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