Parts of the building used by Lira Catholic Diocese as a rehabilitation center. Photo by Sharon Akello
By Sharon Akello
Lira: Mercy Adongo* (not real name), got a boyfriend when she was only 13 years old.
A year later, Adongo, now 16 years old, gave birth to her son, now 2 years old.
The teenager lost her mother in 2020, and being an only child, she started living on the streets in Lira to survive.
“I and other colleagues scavenge garbage bins near hotels and restaurants to look for leftover food to eat,” Adongo said.
Adongo would sometimes use drugs to forget the challenges that come with living on the streets.
“When it’s time for bed in the late night hours, we are forced to sleep on shop verandas or corridors without bedsheets,” she explained.
Due to the hardships and threats of rape and attacks on the streets, Adongo accepted the sexual advances of one of the street-connected boys who is only a year older than her. Adongo said she accepted him because he always made sure she had eaten something every day. Then she became pregnant.
But when she gave birth to her son, life became harder because she didn’t eat well enough to produce enough breast milk for her baby. She couldn’t also get decent clothes for the baby.
One day as she was walking along the Main Street of Lira City, she met Sr. Doreen Oyela, who led her to Lira Ordination Grounds, to meet with His Lordship Sanctus Lino Wanok, the Bishop of Lira Catholic Diocese.
“We were given food to eat, soap for bathing, and a bed for sleeping,” Adongo recalled.
Bishop touching over 500 lives
Bishop Wanok has established a family-based counseling and rehabilitation center in Lira to address addiction challenges among street-connected children.
Adongo is among the more than 560 street-connected children in Lango sub-region benefitting from the program.
Deacon George Olunda Ochieng, the Administrator at Lira Catholic Diocese said the project of the Duty of Truth Rehabilitation Center for street-connected children came as a result of the passion that his Lordship Sanctus Lino Wanok had for the children and desired that they lead decent lives.
“They sold their bodies so that they could sustain a living which was against the Catholic Church’s social teaching,” Ochieng said.
The rehabilitation center currently houses only 25 at the center, while the rest are only given food and they return to sleep on the streets.
However, Ochieng said the children have been classified into three categories. Those 12 years old and below, those above 18, and others above 18 years old are introduced to empowerment programs such as tailoring, mechanics, hairdressing, electrical engineering, and carpentry among others.
He said once the children have completed training in the various courses, the center will do a follow-up visit to their respective homes so that they are reunited with their families.
Sister Doreen Oyella, a counselor at the center, appealed to the central government and other stakeholders to collaborate and take the children off the streets.
Meager resources crippling functionality
However, the center is facing a shortage of food, water, electricity, and medical supplies to support the children.
Ochieng, the Administrator at Lira Catholic Diocese, revealed that they started the project ill-prepared with poor housing and limited food stock.
“The money we have now is meager and cannot sustain us. We only depend on handouts from well-wishers,” Ochieng said.
A recent report by AfriChild shows that more than 10,000 live on the streets of Kampala and other cities in the country.
Background
Lira District leadership in 2012 secured six acres of land for the construction of a regional remand home in Erute North in Lira District following numerous concerns over the challenges of dealing with the prosecution and detention of children who get into conflict with the law.
However, the sub-region has yet to construct the remand home, 12 years later.
Uganda has only seven remand homes including Fort Portal, Gulu, Mbale, Masindi, Arua, Kampiringisa in Mpigi and Naguru.
