Street Life in the City on the Edge: Street youth recount their daily lives in Bukavu, DRC

Abstract

Bukavu, a city on the shores of Lake Kivu on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is home to over one million people, many displaced by poverty and the consequences of armed conflicts that continue to affect the east of the country. More than 10,000 street children and youth live here in street situations. 19 street youth helped to create this story map by recording all the visual data and sharing their stories about their daily lives. The story map includes 9 sections and 2 galleries showing street children and youth’s daily lives in Bukavu and the work of Growing up on the Streets civil society partner PEDER to help them. Chapters include details of how street children and youth collect plastics from the shores of Lake Kivu to sell, they cook, and share food together, or buy from restaurants or stalls. Young women earn their living in sex work and care for their children and young men relax, bond and hope to make extra money by gambling and betting. The original language recorded in the videos is Swahili, this has been translated into English and French for the two versions of the map.