TIKONDANE      
A project of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (MSOLA)
in Lilongwe, Malawi)

Protecting children from the dangers of living on the streets

INTRODUCTION

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (Jn 10, 10b).

Looking back at the year 2007 our grateful eyes see signs of life unfolding. We remember children who were paralysed by fear and distress when they first came to Tikondane. We recall how, little by little, they gained the courage to smile, how they gained in confidence and started ‘to live’.
We also think of relatives and parents whose children had been missing - of how relieved they were when they got their children back through the intervention of Tikondane, after painful days and nights of anxiety. Others have been helped to understand better their children’s difficult behaviour.
As a result of their learning how to handle their children more appropriately, those children were able to settle down and develop in healthier and happier ways.

Seeing all this, we humbly recognise that The Good Shepherd (Jn 10) has continued to use Tikondane as a channel to reach out to children and families who are like ‘sheep without a shepherd’, and to liberate them and let life unfold again within them.

However, we are also sadly aware that some children were not able to take up the opportunities offered to them by Tikondane. In the end, each child has to make their own life choices. Nobody else can do it for them. For various reasons some had been too deeply wounded, broken and discouraged for such choices.

The 2005 report gave an overall view of the reasons why children come to Tikondane, and we pointed out the fact that children who get stranded in town are indicators of problems of the communities they come from. Stories featuring child labour illustrated this.

The 2006 report highlighted injustices and harmful beliefs which enslave people and lead children into desperate situations.

In the present report we would like not only to present new stories, but also to share some follow-up news.
For instance, we can tell you about what has happened to Tiferanji, the girl accused of witchcraft who featured in last year’s report.

2007 HIGHLIGHTS

Tiferanji (not her real name) had been accused of practising witchcraft after the death of her mother. As a result, her late mother’s relatives rejected her and chased her away. The chief put pressure on the family to make sure that she would not come back to his area.
Last year Tiferanji developed symptoms of severe depression and she started ‘playacting’ killing herself by hanging.
Tikondane finally succeeded in tracing the home village of Tiferanji’s father. According to culture, children belong to the mother’s family, but the agogo (grandmother) and others in the extended paternal family gave a warm welcome to Tiferanji. This changed the girl’s life. Her symptoms of depression disappeared; for the first time she was really free, and her face radiated smiles. Now she knows that she has roots, that she belongs to a family and is accepted and loved.
Because of her problems, this intelligent girl had been unable to concentrate at school and produced only mediocre results. We expect that her performance at school will greatly improve in the coming school year.

Forced early marriage

Chipiriro is the daughter of tenant farmers living on a tobacco farm situated over 250 km away from their home village. Her mother fell sick and returned to her village because there were no relatives on the farm to take care of her. And so she left her husband and three children behind.
However it took the mother much longer to get well again than she had expected. By the time she returned to the farm her family had moved on to a different farm, and nobody could tell her where they had gone.
The mother realized that she had lost her three children, and she returned to her village once more in despair. Meanwhile the father was finding it difficult to feed his three children. This is why he forced Chipiriro into marriage at the age of fifteen.
Chipiriro managed to run away, and she walked for several days to a police station. The police there had heard of Tikondane, and it so happened that a police car was driving to Lilongwe that day. This is how Chipiriro reached Lilongwe Police Station, where the Victim Support Unit then referred the girl to Tikondane.
A Tikondane social worker escorted Chipiriro back to her home village. There the social worker heard the full story from the mother’s point of view. Chipiriro knew where the other two children, aged 10 and 7, lived. She said they were in a pitiful state, very neglected. Tikondane arranged a trip with the police, the brother of Chipiriro’s mother (who according to culture is responsible for his sister’s children) and Chipiriro, who knew where the children were being kept.
This is how, through Chipiriro’s courageous escape from a forced early marriage and through collaboration between police, Tikondane and relatives, the children were reunited with their mother.

Human trafficking / child trafficking

All over Malawi there have been intensive efforts by government and non-government stakeholders to combat human trafficking in general and child trafficking in particular. On one occasion the police in Lilongwe arrested several men who had recruited boys, some of them as young as 11 years; some had been recruited without parental consent. The boys had been told that they would work on farms within Malawi, but actually the intention was to send them to Mozambique and Zambia. As Tikondane is still the only organisation to offer a night shelter for children in the city, a total of 16 boys were accommodated at Tikondane for the duration of the police investigations and court proceedings.

Intensified street outreach

Two Tikondane staff have been out regularly on the streets to meet the children who are living there and to establish which among them have an alternative to street life. They succeeded in finding alternatives for 19 children, and for several months now they have been off the streets. A survey conducted in August and September showed that 34 boys and 8 girls had been found living on the streets.

Transit shelter

The transit shelter recorded 2,604 overnight stays. Tikondane aims at providing only short-term transit accommodation, however there were 22 children who, because of difficult circumstances, had to stay for more than two weeks.
The average stay of children in this group was 26 days. One example is a boy who stayed for one school term (66 days) in preparation for boarding school; he needed to stabilise after the trauma he suffered in reaction to his mother’s death. Another is a girl whose father had molested her, and whose relatives were hard to trace – it took 55 days to find them.

Follow-up visits to support reintegration

Once more Tikondane staff made more than 480 follow-up visits in the year. This includes visits to a number of children who had been reintegrated in previous years. The psychosocial support which is provided to the children and their families through these follow-up visits has played a very important role in keeping the majority of children at home. We pay special attention to efforts for children to continue with schooling.
In 2007 one of our boys graduated  uccessfully with a Diploma in Accountancy and found employment almost immediately!
Tikondane has known this boy since 2001. After the death of his father, relatives had grabbed the widow’s property from her and the orphaned children. It was anger and the lack of basic essentials for survival that pushed this boy out on to the streets.
Tikondane assisted this academically very able boy to complete secondary schooling and then a college course.

Boarding Schools

Thanks to good collaboration with the management of the boarding schools where we have placed children, and close follow- up of the children themselves, most of them continued to make good progress. But unfortunately three boys ran away, one after stealing and the other two had found the discipline too difficult. One of them is now on the streets of Blantyre; we lost track of one; but the third returned recently to his parents after having spent some more months on the streets of Lilongwe.
Tikondane conducted workshops with the management, teachers and boarding staff of the various schools. The aim was to share experiences and to create more awareness on the psycho-social needs not only of Tikondane’s children, but of children in general and boarding-school children in particular.

Capacity Building

Staff:
Tikondane uses the child rights approach. Two members of staff have participated in a two-week training course on human rights / child rights.
We are looking forward to welcoming a child therapist to Tikondane in 2008. Mrs Kathrin vom Hoff will have a three-year contract with us and she will offer in-service training and supervision to the social work team.
We expect that this will help the team to deal more competently and effectively with the many very challenging situations we are faced with.

Transit Shelter:
The food-store, a classroom, a counseling room, the walk-ways around the building and a soak-away needed renovation, and these repairs were carried out in 2007.

Transport:
Good mobility is vital for Tikondane to operate effectively, especially for investigating children’s stories, escorting them and following up. One of the cars became unreliable and had to be replaced.

Comparative statistics on newcomers at the shelter (click to see the Excel file)

Newcomers from 2004 to 2007