Working class boys a time bomb

For a trained journalistic eye, one thing you cannot fail to notice at the Juba International Airport is the gang of little boys cleaning the big cars within the premise.

The airport itself is a modest establishment with just enough facilities for its core business of facilitating arrival and departure of passengers. No niceties like furnished passenger lounges, flashy well-stocked duty free shops, escalators or basement and storied car parks. Not even restaurants are found here.

You stay in the Southern Sudanese capital for a few days, and you soon realise that the gang at the airport is not the only one of boys who should otherwise be in school, studying for their future roles in the society.
Many more are at car wash points, others are shoe shiners as many more collect and load and ferry in carton boxes, discarded mineral water bottles for sale.

Juba being a net importer of commodities, the discarded water bottle are handy for the repacking items of items brought in huge units for resale in smaller units. Some, residents say, are used by unscrupulous traders to package untreated water for sale to gullible clients.

Time bomb

The shoe shining lot will actually approach you in a restaurant, a pair of sandals in hand, and ask for your shoes to be polished outside as you eat or have a drink. When done, they return the shoes, you pay and they move on.

Some boys hawk all manner of merchandise as others just keep themselves engaged playing a wide range of games.
The boys invariably look unkempt; not your kind of emerging urban sophisticates, clad in jeans and Nike sports shoes, and sometimes, owners of mobile phones with internet connection.

Like other African urban settlements, Juba is not short of children who fend for themselves for a living.
And why not!
For over two decades, an internecine war ravaged the entire Southern Sudan region, during which large numbers were left orphaned, while others were simply separated from their parents.

Some may be lucky to have parents, but their lot has been condemned to excruciating poverty, due to the devastations of war. In such circumstances, it would be surprising if a household did not mobilise every member old enough to use his hands, to contribute to the family kitty.

According to UN Human Development Index, up to 90 per cent of Southern Sudanese live below the poverty line. Adult literacy level stands at a meagre 24 per cent, rendering millions unfit to skilled employment in a modern day economy. At least 48 per cent of children in the region suffer from malnutrition.

As the Sudanese cast their ballots enthusiastically in a referendum for their independence, a vote many believe will sail through with an overwhelming majority; the people concerned must engage their minds on how to tackle this time bomb.
These working class boys, or at least most of them, must be rounded up and taken to school