TRAVEL MEMOIRS
Don’t Call Me Kali
She stole my heart and I tried to give her a chance of a better life
Each year, April 12th marks International Day for Street Children. It’s one of those less-noted global days. Yet in my mind it’s one that we should be taking far more notice of.
Children fending for themselves on the streets are a global responsibility.
Here in the UK, the awareness of street children is virtually non-existent. Sure, we have homeless people sleeping on the street here, but not children. While society just about tolerates adults being tossed out onto the streets in this current brutal economy, the accepted explanation is that many have inflicted the situation upon themselves — though this is often far from the whole story, or even the true story — and society would never tolerate seeing children being forced to sleep rough.
But the children for whom this global marker is bringing to our attention are generally living in cultures where this has become the norm. Where children survive and fend for themselves on the streets, often away from their families. And for this reason, I feel it’s an important day to bring to our awareness the plight of children who are a very, very long way from our realities.
