– ‘Selling their bodies’ –
Girls face an especially tough time.
The Rescue Dada Centre – ‘Girl Rescue’ Centre in Swahili – has been supporting the rehabilitation of street girls in Nairobi for over two decades.
Composed of a dormitory and classrooms, the centre is home to 70 girls. It offers psychological support as well as education, and leads efforts to reunite them with their families.
“The life in town is very difficult, one sleeps out in the cold where you are rained on, sometimes you find that you wake up and find that one of your colleagues has died,” said Janet, 16, who just recently joined the centre.
“Others even end up selling their bodies in order to get money to buy food.”
Of the girls admitted in 2014, almost a third were victims of sexual abuse or sexual exploitation, some the victims of gang rape. Many are forced to become prostitutes, with a high risk of contracting AIDS.
“Rehabilitation can take a lot of time,” said the centre’s director Mary Njeri Gatitu. But she struggles on, providing what help she can.
“It is a drop of water in an ocean, because the issue of poverty in Kenya is not being addressed by the government,” she added.
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