This archive report was first published on 21 September 2019.
September 21, 2019
Samuel Mutua, 23, has been living with the trauma of his parents' brutal murder since he was four years old. He witnessed the event in Machakos County and has been struggling with schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) ever since.
Mutua is one of the 162 children hosted at Thunguma Children and Youth Empowerment Centre in Nyeri, where he has been receiving treatment and counseling for his mental health issues.
The centre's administrator, Daniel Waithaka, said that most of the children who end up on the streets do so due to problems ranging from poverty, sexual abuse, violence at home, and abandonment.
“Most of these children have troubled lives because they have witnessed all manner of things at home and in the streets. Children who witness domestic violence at home have a higher risk of developing depression that has far-reaching effects on their psychological development,” Waithaka said.
The centre has a drop-in centre in Nyeri town where social workers go scouting for children and entice them with lunch to woo them to the rehabilitation centre. Some children are admitted to the facility after several attempts.
At the centres, the children are taken through medical tests to establish if they have any diseases, physical or mental. Cases of HIV and AIDS, malnutrition, and skin conditions are common besides psychological disorders.
Waithaka admitted that managing bitterness and anger following extreme encounters like violence and sexual harassment is a major challenge. “Some children end up in streets due to broken families and they get mentally tormented. We hold counseling sessions for such cases and it might take years for them to lead normal lives,” he said.
Benard Oduor, an alumnus of a rehab centre in Nairobi, now a staffer at Thunguma, said that some traders offer the children glue as a token for helping them carry luggage. “The only way traders could keep us in the streets to help them move luggage from one point to another was offering drugs. That was so selfish of them but thankfully we regained dignity,” Oduor said.
