Society does not race to embrace the children it sees abandoned. It often seems as if we simply want to sanitise the streets, to remove these strange anti-social beings from public view, rather than tackle their problems seriously. When I was working in Peru in 1982, a series of articles in a daily newspaper provided profiles of street children by a well-known journalist. A committee was set up to solve the problem of street children once and for all, amid much publicity from the same newspaper, but by the second meeting well over half the participants had lost interest, and those who remained seemed to be most worried that street children might be easily influenced by a guerilla organisation, Sendero Luminoso. No money was forthcoming, no preventative measures were ever discussed and the committee soon stopped meeting.
Some people romanticise street children emphasizing their independence and dignity.
But this is another myth. In reality they are hungry for care. The windscreen-wiper might have coped with knife wounds, but his thumb was firmly in his mouth. Their overt affection and interest mask a desperate need to improve a pitifully small stock of self-esteem. They demand physical contact, often alternating fierce hugs and cuddles with aggressive behaviour seemingly designed to elicit blows - which may have been their only physical contact with their parents.