Nima: Abandoned boy, 8, fights for survival

An eight-year-old boy in Nima, Salim, has been abandoned by his grandmother and left on his own to go search for his father.

“I left home to go and dispose of garbage. Upon my return, my grandmother had packed my clothes in a polythene bag and she asked me to go to my father," said Salim, when I met him wandering at Nima with a black polythene bag and a bucket stuffed with clothes.

Salim should be in school this morning, just like his age mates I see walking by sharply dressed in uniforms, but his story is different.

Almost in tears, Salim left home and in search of his father met Abdul Rashid, a Nima resident who was concerned about him walking about with his belongings instead of being in school.

“When I saw Salim holding the polythene bag and bucket, I enquired why he was not in school. He told me his grandmother had sent him so I marched him to his house and met his grandmother. I spoke to her and she told me she was travelling to Kumasi and would be back in two weeks so there is no one at home to cater for him,” says Abdul Rashid.

Salim’s situation is not an isolated case in a densely populated community like Nima. A resident, Sulley, tells me many children are not well taken care of by their parents and are left to struggle through life.

“In my area, there are lots of kids whose parents are alive, but they don’t go to school. When you ask them, they complain that their parents don’t feed and don’t have money to go to school,” he said.

Perhaps that explains why lots of children here drop out of school and become miscreants. Until help comes to eight-year-old Salim, his future looks very bleak.