Friday, March 2, 2012

Street Kids and their addiction

We can see lots of street kids basically homeless children roaming in our city. These kids stay in groups. They come to city in search of better life as most of them come from remote areas of Nepal. The places from where they come have less opportunity. The other reason they come to city is because they are driven out form their house by their step mother or some other family related problems. After they reach the city many try to get work, the lucky ones get jobs at tea shops as a helper, as bus or tempo or micro bus conductors and luckier one are kept as a house workers and helpers.

What about the unlucky ones?

The unlucky ones are forced to sleep on the street, run towards dumping site to collect plastic, glass bottles which they collect and sale to scrap shop to earn some money and kill their hunger. They are not always lucky enough to make money out of such dumps to kill their hunger. They are forced to beg or get into pick pocketing. Sometimes, they fight among each other and steal friends’ money but still they are seen together walking around corners of Kathmandu’s streets. We can even see them begging, especially with the tourist as they know most of Nepalese people won’t give them a single paisa.

Now-a-days, we can see that these street kids have developed a new kind of addiction. Their addiction is towards the odor that comes from some adhesive which are mostly used in making leather shoes. In Nepal they are commonly known as “Dendrite” by the name of the company that produces them.

These adhesive are synthetic rubber which is a combination of Aromatic and Aliphatic Solvent with a strong odor. They are highly flammable too.

(Source: CWIN Survey on Glue Sniffing Among Street Children in the Kathmandu Valley, 2002)


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