Mozambique: Around 600 students are sitting on the floor at the 'Nampula Secondary' - report
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Thick clouds indicates rain and Salvador Marcelino, 13, a child chaperone, despairs, because the streets of Chimoio will be empty, and no alms means no dinner.
Salvador has spent six years walking the streets of the Manica provincial capital in central Mozambique, guiding his 62-year-old blind grandmother begging.
He has strategies to deal with the rain and switches from the pavement to the awnings of commercial establishments, positioning his grandmother near the doors to ensure that they receive enough to guarantee the survival of the five other family members – all orphans and minors – who depend on their daily collection to eat.
“If we do not collect, we go to sleep hungry,” Salvador Marcelino told Lusa, adding that he can collect a daily average of 50 meticais on bad days and up to 100 meticais on good ones, still largely below their needs, and “this forces us to into the same routine, come rain or shine”.
Scores of child-guides fill the streets of Chimoio, at fixed points or wandering about, bringing home food, an occupation that frequently exposes them to psychological and social violence potentially weaken their future and that of the country itself, sources warn Lusa.
“Child-guides are a reality in the provincial capitals, especially in Chimoio, and we are worried about the situation,” Domingos Neves, provincial delegate of the Association of Blind and Partially Sighted People of Mozambique (ACAMO) in Manica says.
There are no official statistics on how many children guide their begging relatives, but almost every day there are new children on the streets. Most are the children or grandchildren of the beggars, but there are also rented guides.
Domingos Neves characterises the exposure of children to begging as “violence”, and as seriously compromising their social life, as begging can become a destructive vice.
“This means this group does not contribute to the economy, creating a community of beggars,” he says.
A well-dressed 12-year-old, Cristina Eugénio has been guiding her grandmother for the last seven years. Wearing a coat and sporting a coloured Chinese watch she claims to be the fruit of begging, she walks along the Avenida do Trabalho.
“Collections have been merciful, despite the insults and physical violence,” she says. She guides her grandmother along the main avenues and through informal markets and supermarkets for 10 hours every day.
Barefoot and wearing threadbare shorts, twelve-year-old Zeca Samuel became a begging guide to three months ago.
Still new enough to be embarrassed, he is being instructed by a cousin of the same age on how to work the streets of Chimoio and where to cross to avoid accidents, and tells us that the financial situation in his family left him with no option.
“We never have any money left over – everything goes on food,” he told Lusa. He complains about “the constant fights and physical violence” among children-guides during “disputes over food being offered in the prime positions”.
A government programme partnered with ACAMO offers support for the visually impaired, giving free access to education in public schools, but often the classrooms are replaced by the streets, supposedly to fight poverty.
“We have great support from the government, but the amount of aid is still insignificant, and more support is needed, because if we do not fight the problem now, we will compromise the future,” Domingo Neves says, inviting national and international organisations to step in and help.
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