Seema:
I am eleven years old and come from a small village. I left home
to come to the city and to work to send money to my family. Now I work in a
factory making T-shirts. I work twelve hours a day for very little money. The
factory is very dirty and hot. There are hardly any windows and sometimes it
is hard to breathe. The boss is very mean and often beats us. He makes us work
very hard without breaks. My friends and I want to leave but we know that working
in the factory is better than begging in the streets. The boss tells us this
every day. We do what he says.
David:
I am ten years old and I live with my family. My father comes home very late
every night. He often comes home drunk and hits my mother. When I try to stick
up for my mother my father beats me, too. I can't tell him how I feel because
he is the boss in the house. He says that it is his house and that I don't have
the right to speak about things that don't concern me. But I think he is wrong
and that things do concern me when he is hurting my mother and me. I feel very
angry and I am planning to run away from home when I turn thirteen. I will go
to a place where he will never find me.
Amela:
I am nine years old and I was born in a city where war has become a way of life.
The other day my mother and I had to leave our home so we could run away to
another country. We left on buses. More than a thousand people left at the same
time. We had to leave everything behind. My mother told me that we are now refugees.
Some people do not want to associate with us because of our religion. Now we
have no home, no books, no toys, and all our friends are gone. I think that
I will probably never see my friends and family again. We are all crowded and
hungry and soldiers often interfere with us. My mother cries all the time. I
try to be strong, but I am very scared.