This is the second in a series of interviews with children who have been rescued by the Ministry of Human Services being published in recognition of Child Protection Week.
No one remembers their first pair of shoes and people are not realistically expected to, but *Jane recalls the sandals she got two years ago. It was her first pair and her mother admitted it was the first time she had seen Jane’s feet shod since giving birth to her.
She remembers attending school bare feet for a few months of her life and feeling different but never ashamed because to her it was normal. Children looked at her funny yet she kept going until her mother decided a life of begging full time on the streets was the better option. “I think I start begging before I could walk,” Jane said while reflecting on her life recently.
Born to a mother who has begged all her life Jane was introduced to Regent Street while she was still in cloth diapers, her mother used whatever scraps of cloth were around the house as diapers. On any given day 16 years ago Jane was bundled in her mother’s arms on Regent Street facing the cruelties of the world even before she understood it.
The young girl at 16 who sat down for the interview recently looked normal and can relate to an issue without bringing up the hardships of her past. However, her past was brutal; the sort of story that rips away at any heart because of how early she knew pain and how much of it she was forced to take on. She sat upright, with her head held high throughout the interview, as if to make a statement that the little girl who had it rough is today a proud teenager.
Jane was too young remember the early years spent on Regent Street, but she recalled that her mother would often send her to beg men when she was around age seven. She went to school for a few months during that time and dropped out when her mother wanted to make more money; Jane was the one who pulled in the money. The money hardly went to food because her mother would take it and buy alcohol which she later shared with Jane’s stepfather.
“I never used to like asking men for money, ‘cause some of them wanted sex and when I told my mother she used to tell me go. She forced me to go,” Jane recalled. She had to endure that quite a few times and when she was not being abused by the men on the road it was her stepfather. Her mother sat quietly by, most of the times intoxicated, while her stepfather raped her inside their one-bedroom shack at East Bank Essequibo.
Home to Jane was nothing but a dark hole, literally and figuratively. She slept on a piece of foam and hardly had anything to eat. The hunger would be so unbearable at times she ended up turning to the bottle like her mother and stepfather. She drank High Wine and eventually lost herself away in the bottle until the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security found her.
“Somebody complain to the ministry about me and my mother and they picked me up from off the street. I didn’t want to go at first, but it wasn’t just me, it was my brothers and sisters too,” she recalled. The ministry took her and four others including a baby, all of whom were on the streets begging. The mother was charged with child neglect and the stepfather was imprisoned for assaulting Jane.
Jane said that at first she resisted moves by the ministry to help her, because of how comfortable that life had become. She said it was all she knew; Regent Street was home. From 7 am to 4 pm she would accompany her mother to beg every day and when her siblings came along they all went. She said her mother explained that people were more sympathetic to children.
The ministry has been working with Jane’s mother for the two years since she and the others were picked up from the streets and the woman has shown some signs of improvement. Jane now sees herself as the parent and is eager to take on the responsibility of caring for her brothers and sisters. But she is aware that she must be employed to do so and is counting on the ministry to help her find a place to live after she moves out of the Children Centre where she is currently residing with her siblings.
“I am going to work and be somebody; not that person who was begging. I can’t even beg people for things now I does be shame,” she said laughing. She recalled when the ministry found her they had to work for months on cleaning her up. Jane said that her years of wearing no shoes have permanently damaged her feet and despite the period of healing it still bears shocking scars. She said her condition was so appalling that no sane person would have taken her in, but the ministry did.
Recently Jane was on a work attachment with a care institution in the city and she performed so well that she was offered a job. However, she has decided to go back for two more years of training before taking on any employment. “I want to be good,” she said.
After years of braving the streets and living a life dictated by her mother, Jane has matured. She recognizes that she is more than the girl people took advantage of on the road. She is now ready to protect her brothers and sisters.
*The name of the child has been changed to protect her identity.
