Told by Ruth Payne, Doctoral Researcher for Street Child Africa

Christopher was 16 when I met him at a bus station in Kitwe, a mining town in the Copperbelt of Zambia. I had been trying to reach him ever since I had become friends with his little brothers in a shanty-compound. They told me how Christopher had been working on the streets to support them since he was 11. Over the years, Christopher had sold second-hand clothing, beer and paraffin, but recently, his fortunes had improved and he had landed himself a job as a bus conductor. He was popular and boisterous at the bus station but shy with me. Gradually we became friends and he opened up about his strained relationship with his parents, and how he resented them moving from Kitwe back to their village some years previously after his father had an affair. His parents promised to send food and money but his father became sick with TB and his mother struggled to afford hospital fees and food.

Consequently, Christopher was left to protect, feed, clothe and care for his younger brothers. As they grew older, they too began to work on the streets and Peter, his younger brother, took over from Christopher selling paraffin to help buy goods and cover school costs. Christopher began spending more and more time sleeping on the streets and got involved with a gang of boys who also worked at the bus station. During his parents’ infrequent visits to town Christopher felt unwelcome in the shack he called home – there was never enough room for him to sleep and his father would call him a drunkard.

A year later, I returned to Kitwe to find Christopher in prison, having been accused, along with three other boys, of raping a 16 year old girl. His trial was being held in an adult court and he had been on remand in an adult prison for 12 months, awaiting a verdict on his case. When I visited him in prison he was sick with malaria and deeply scared. Rape carries the death penalty in Zambia. Christopher’s verdict and sentencing was postponed on four occasions, either because there was no transport to take him to court or because the judge arrived unprepared. Finally, after 12 months in prison, Christopher was found innocent and released. The last I heard from him was that he didn’t want anything to do with his family, despite his mother’s attempts to reconcile with him.

I do not know to this day whether Christopher was innocent or guilty, but I do know that he has not seen much justice in his turbulent life.