The children who live on the street visit us for the day
Today was a very special day for the Yebo team as we had a group of special visitors. 25 of the children who currently live on the streets in the slums were picked up by our bus and brought to UWEC, the wildlife centre where we are staying.
Most of the children have never been outside of living on the streets as have been born into them.
Having visited their home the day before, we did not know what to expect of them, and because of the place they were living, we automatically presumed that the children would not be happy at the centre which made us quite anxious. However when the children arrived they were the most beautiful bunch of children.
Patrick and William, who work with the children on the streets had chosen 25 children who they have known for a while to attend the day with us where we would be doing some activities with them and meeting the wildlife and chimpanzees. They had been to the street slums early that morning to wash and dress them in clean clothes ready for the day which we were all looking forward to. For most of the children, this was the first time they had been out of the slums as many of them had been born into the streets for many different reasons. The children each have their own individual life story, many orphans, abused, victims of prostitution etc.
We started the day by introducing all of us to them and vice versa. What we didn’t realise was that most of the children had already met us the day before on the streets, but just looked incredibly different in another environment. We took the children around the wildlife centre spending a lot of time at the chimpanzee island. The children all sat on the steps by the chimpanzees home and were told that the chimpanzees also had gone through difficult backgrounds, but they had now been given the chance to have a better life, and although they were not near their old friends, they had now made new ones and it wasn’t a bad place. The children were told that they shouldn’t ‘give up 
hope’ and that the chimpanzees had now been 
rescued and brought into a different environment, even though they may have not known what would happen to them. They told the main thing they should take with them from this visit was the feelings of the chimpanzees before and after they arrived at the sanctuary, and to never give up hope. The children were all very silent when listening to this.
After looking at all of the animals the children were provided with a meal for lunch with a drink. We were told by Patrick that this was the most exciting part of the day for them! He told us that the children will normally get their food from garbage bins, bags and sometimes if they are lucky will take the left over garbage food from the local hotel after they have closed. The water that they drink is not clean.
The children said that they really enjoyed their meal and drink and couldn’t stop talking about it after they had eaten it. We were glad that we were able to provide them with a meal.
After lunch we proceeded to the activities room where we had organised a number of different activities. They were slightly different from the children we had been working with before, as we made animals, primates etc out of garbage, and also used different forms of art that would be more suited to their abilities and ages. The activities were very creatively put together by the volunteers, and the children were drawing pictures of things that they thought they had learnt about the chimpanzees and their homes. Every picture in that age group we observed drew a picture of a house, with a family, dogs, trees etc outside, which we found very interesting. One of our volunteers, 
Dani, used her social work training skills to observe and identify different behaviours in all of the groups of children that we had been working with on the different visits to the centre.
The day went really well and the children appeared to have had a great day. They loved bubbles and balloons and it was great to see them having fun. This opportunity for them to use art to express their feelings also showed us how talented many of them were and what wonderful skills they had, and how clever many of them were.
A couple of the children had just laid down on the floor of the room we were in and had fallen asleep. Patrick and William let us know that these children don’t normally get a lot of sleep and that the smooth floor in the room we were in was a very comfortable place for them to sleep than what they are used to.
So this day had taught us a lot of things, one being that we should never judge a young person or child from where they are living and their behaviours. Allowing room for both of these things enabled us to work well with them, and get to know them each as ‘talented’ and ‘beautiful’ children, rather than the same children we had just ‘walked past’ the day before in their home in the slum. How grateful we all were to have been given the opportunity to work with these children, and to get to know them as individuals.
As we said goodbye, we felt very sad, some of us even shedding a slight tear as the children were driven off in the bus, as we suddenly realised they were being taken back to their streets in the slums.