John

7 months ago, 13-year-old John met Toybox’s partner in Kenya, Pendekezo Letu, on the streets of Nairobi. Before then, although he was still living at home with his mum, the family’s poor economic situation meant that he’d had to drop out of school to work on the dumpsite scavenging for scrap to sell. Now, he’s sharing his experiences of life on Nairobi’s streets in his own words.

"I don’t go to school – my mother told me I had to leave to go and work at the dumpsite instead. So, most days, I go the base where my friends live to meet them before we go to dumping site to scavenge for plastics and scrap metals. We stay there most of the morning in general, although if the garbage truck comes early, we can gather enough things earlier and then leave early. In the afternoon, we go to sell the things we’ve found although other days, we have to wait until the next morning if the place we go is already closed. If you make it on time and have found some good things, you get good money which means you can go to a hotel and buy lunch. The rest of my money, I take home with me. After that, we normally go and hang around at a market to borrow money or collect the produce that falls off the lorries. Sometimes we get given food by people voluntarily. That’s when I go home, sometimes to help my mum sell water before we cook together and go to bed."

“Being in my community is generally ok – there are some good people who help you when you have problems, but there are also many people, including young children, who are taking drugs, which I don’t like.” John

"On the dumpsite, it’s difficult a lot of the time because I am bullied by the bigger boys. You also often get tired before you’ve collected enough things to sell. Sometimes, it also smells very bad and there are nails and broken metals so a lot of people get injured. Before, I used to hang onto garbage trucks going to dumpsite every day – now though, I know the dangers thanks to PKL. I also used to disrespect my mother, whereas now I try my best not to talk back at her even when I’m angry.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are different from the other days. Instead of going to the base, my friends and I go to the urban farm that we’ve made with PKL to care for the vegetables we’ve planted. When the vegetables are big, we can pick them to take home to eat. We also learn all about life skills and our rights as children.

We grow many things like kale, spinach, peas, onions, managu and terere (local leafy vegetables similar to spinach). We also have a few tomatoes and one pumpkin plant. They are all growing well but they need a lot of watering. The kales always get infested with pests like ants, but we’ve learned how to spray them. I love growing spinach the most – they grow the fastest and are not attacked by pests like the kale."

“I feel more responsible when I take care of the plants and they grow up well. I feel at peace at the farm because when we’re there, people are calm, there’s no fighting or insults and we all work as a team. I also feel happy because I’m doing something productive that can feed my family – every time we harvest, I take kale, spinach and managu back to my mother, then we make ugali which everyone likes a lot.” John

"We learn so much like how plants need to be watered early in the morning and late in the evening when the sun is not hot. And, you need to check the plants often so that if one of them is attacked by ants, you can quickly spray it before it spreads to the others. I’ve also learned how to mix the soil with manure and how to space the holes in the sack, so each plant has space to grow.

These are skills I would like to use in the future. If I have enough money to buy sacks, I’ll play vegetables – although right now, I can’t afford to buy them and there’s now space at home to grow. I would like to grow onions though as they are marketable and easy to grow.

I don’t want to go back to school because I’ve been away for a long time now – I can’t remember anything. Plus, I’m big now and I don’t want to be in a class with small children. That said, when I’m older, I’d like to be a school bus driver to take care of children and drive them to school safely.”