Double Orphan

I will start to explain my experience of children in Zambia and Tanzania.

 I have spent time with children in different environments to see the difference between them. It is a big different between children in towns, children on the countryside and children in the bush. Also a big different if they are orphans or it they have parents alive.

Children can be orphans in two ways. Single or double orphan. A single orphan have one parent, mother or father, in life, and a double orphan have lost both their parents. If a children is a double orphan and don't have any relatives that can take care of them or relatives in life, then they are alone. Real alone.
They don't have any rights at all and most of them don't have a chance to go to school. Very often there is some sister or brother to take care of also.

Now I will write about some double orphans. The place is a small town, Sinazeze, and a big city, Lusaka.

Forced to be adult

This girl was only 9 years old and took care of her younger brother. She was standing and looked at the event in Sinazeze December 1, World AIDS day. I asked if she understand what the event was for, and she told me that all youth and children like dance and singing. She didn't had a clue of the message in the song or speeches,  the text at the banners she couldn't read, and even if she could she probably didn't understand it. All her time is going to take care of her brother. To go out and beg for food and to take care of her died parents home. She had been forced to be an adult, and this at an age of 9 year. I asked about her parents what was happening with them. She told that they become to be ill and then they just die. What they died of she didn't know. I found out from some people that they both died in AIDS, If this girl and her brother are infected by HIV no one will now. They don't have the possibility to check because of the costs, and they are orphans so why should someone help them. And this is not a story just for these two children, thousands and thousands is in the same position, just like these two.

To be an orphan in a city or bigger town, is even harder. They can not do farming as a lot of children in the bush can. They live on the streets and can only survive by begging and steeling. They can not keep the home because they can't pay the rent for it, and the community homes for orphans is over filled. It is only the streets left for them. These ones are really doomed and thousands of street children dies every year. Just because no one can or will take care of them. After some time out on the streets no one will take them to there homes and no institutes or likely will not take them in to the system, if it will be an available place for them.
After a time a lot of them will be alcoholic or addicted to drugs.
 There is a lot of children, just around 10 years old, that inhale glue just to flee from the reality. When I met a boy that was addicted to the glue, it was impossible to find any life in his eyes. He looked at me, but the sight was just going through me and somewhere else. He smiled but it was not a soul who did it. It was just an reflex, and then he continued to inhale his glue.

Tomorrow I will write about some single orphans