THE STREET
CHILDREN
The Fathers were also inclined
to question the concentration on street
children,
both by GOAL and a notable Irish nun, Sister
Mary Killeen of the
Irish
Sisters of Mercy. Again they appeared
to feel that the street children
problem
fell into the 'that's Africa' category.
Goal Street Children Project
The GOAL venture was in
the hands of Maggie, a young Irishwoman who
was setting up
a drop-in centre for
the children. GOAL had taken over an
old
house and a gang of
workers were renovating this when I visited; Maggie was
contending
with the usual sexual innuendo and ostentatious lounging
of
loutish building
workers anywhere, compounded by the fact that she was not
a very
robust white woman in a black situation.
The idea was to provide
hostel-type accommodation
for both boys and girls. The AIDS pandemic
means that street children
are an ever-growing problem throughout Africa, as
in the Third
World generally. The homeless children
sleep rough, join gangs,
are
pressed into prostitution or paedophile rings, and
become prey to drugs,
violence and sexually
transmitted diseases of all sorts. As
most of the kids,
according
to Maggie, are 'as high as kites', by the end of the day - on anything
from alcohol or glue to hard
drugs - road fatalities are also common in
Nairobi's chaotic
traffic.
Maggie eventually succeeded, with
the aid of donors,
in creating
her haven. The children now
receive meals, some basic education,
psychiatric counselling
and, above all, security.
“Mother Theresa, move over:” About Sr Mary Killeen
'Mother
Theresa, move over', is how I have heard Sister Mary Killeen
described. She showed me how
she operates in one of Nairobi's mini Sowetos
where sewage ran
on the paths between the teeming shacks,
and the
unemployment and general
deprivation was such that
I doubt it would have
been safe
for me to venture into the area, even in daytime, without the
protection of her
presence.
At one end of the
cabin-type facility built by
GOAL, which
constitutes her centre, AIDS victims are beginning to take up
more and more space. At
the other end are the street children.
Sister Mary told
me that as the AIDS epidemic spreads,
a belief has taken
hold that it
is safer to have sex with the young, because they will
not yet have
been exposed to
the diseases. Thus boys and
girls are preyed upon by all levels
of society, including
both police and priests (although let it be
said that
amongst the former Sister
Mary has found some of her best helpers). When I
met her, Sister Mary
was trying to get the Church
authorities to take up
complaints
she had made against specific Catholic priests, but the hierarchy
was displaying the all too
familiar pass-the-parcel policy of the
Church
towards paedophilia. The Cardinal, an
elderly African, had said he was too
old to
deal with such a complex issue and was leaving it for his successor.
The
Order, to which some of
the men involved belonged, was also opposing
Sister
Mary's efforts, and,
as I learnt at first hand, so were some members of her own
congregation.
Nevertheless, Sister Mary was prosecuting her enquiries
undaunted either
by criticism or worse possibilities.
I met
her leading two light-skinned children by
the hand. Neither was more
than a
year or two old and both had badly deformed feet. Sister Mary was
bringing them to a wealthy
American woman - who customarily took over
not a suite, but the
entire floor of the hotel she stayed in - in the hope that
she
could persuade the
millionairess to pay for an operation to
straighten their
limbs. Their injuries had
been caused by what was either intimidation or a
murder attempt on their
mother. Her bed was set on fire by a gang as
she slept.
The arsonists are alleged
to have been attempting to dissuade her
from giving
evidence against
a paedophile, who had fathered the children on her while
she
was under age. The man is
a Catholic priest.
Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora
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