As a child Mandi Ngentweni lived on the streets of East London, South Africa. Now she is among the leaders of Umthombo, a charity run by former street kids, which helps reintegrate children with their families.

Success with street children is not instant, it takes a lot of time and work. I think of one young woman who Umthombo helped to get off the streets and back to her home. Now she is back on the street again. She has HIV and AIDS and her own community will no longer accept her, but she is beginning to go back home more often, and each time staying a bit longer.
I see many similarities between her life and mine as it used to be: I grew up on the rubbish dumps in East London. My mother and stepfather were both alcoholics and there was a lot of fighting at home. As well as begging, we spent a lot of time near a taxi rank where the vendors would sell food and vegetables. At the end of the day when the leftover food was rotting because of the sun, they would throw it away, which meant we could eat it. After lunchtime or dinner time we would go to the back of a hotel to the bins where they threw out the food that customers had not eaten.
I try to block the memories out, they are too painful. It’s why kids on the street take glue, and why I used benzine and paint – we used anything that was thrown on the dump that we could sniff or smoke. It makes a difference to how you feel, you forget all the pain. When you’re high you feel you can do anything – it gives you a sense of escape.
When a new child arrives on the street, often other children who have been around for a while will refer them straight to Umthombo because they know this is not a good life for kids. They want to get them home as soon as they can, and they know that this is most possible as soon as they arrive. When we first meet the children, we try to explain about the dangers that they might not really have taken in – the dangers of rape or violence or sexual abuse. But it is difficult to trust people if you live on the street, because you suspect them. It is hard to accept that, when someone is nice to you and talks with you, that they don’t want something from you. This suspicion is a constant problem we face in working with street kids. For example, a child will often only give you a nickname when you first get to know them. When, eventually, they do give you their real name, this is an important sign that trust is building in your relationship.
Society has rejected street children. When I was on the streets in the 1990s, although people abused you they also gave you money and food as they passed – you weren’t chased away by the police or rounded up and dumped somewhere else. Today it’s much more dangerous. With high unemployment, crime is rising and older men will sometimes use street kids for burglary and muggings. Even when they are not involved, street kids often get the blame for crime. It’s not surprising that you can start losing hope after a month or two. After a while you start to believe the passers-by who regularly tell you you are nothing. They are only repeating to you what your family have probably been telling you since you were young. I felt this myself.
The best thing about my job is seeing the faces of kids when I talk to them about my own background, as they realise that I know what they are going through, because I’ve been there. Their faces light up, they want to know how I got off the streets – they want to know if they can get off the streets too. Now that I have helped to establish an NGO they will say that they want to start one too!
It is rewarding work. Every week we are able to help another child back to their families, back from the streets, sometimes a few children. Last year, more than 70 children returned home. I visit the families afterwards as part of our aftercare programme, and often the families are very grateful to us – especially when I explain to them how their child has been in danger. Sometimes they aren’t happy to see me, because maybe a new husband has arrived who did not want the child there anyway. If it is a boy then he may be beaten and sent away again, or a girl may be raped. If that is the case then we come up with another plan for the child.
I think my story offers them hope. They realise that there is a way out, that they don’t have to stay here for ever because they look at me and see that I got out.