When we were at the centre, they kept telling us that it is bad for a child to work on the lake. I was surprised at this because none of them even knew my village. They didn’t know about our situation, about why we work on the lake. They said we had been forced to work and other things that were not true. Many of us went along with that because we were afraid we would get into trouble if we said something different. We thought they might not let us see our families again if we disagreed with them.
After some time, they finally let us go to our families again. I was very happy that day, but I was also sad. There were things about the centre that I liked and I wished that I could continue having them. We had good food to eat and I didn’t have to work. Since I came home, nothing had changed for us in our lives. Things are now even more difficult, because we can’t help father to catch fish for the family. They warned him that he would be put in prison if they found him with his children on the lake again.
If those people had asked me and my siblings why we were fishing that day, we would have told them it was because we want to help our family and not because we were being forced. We also want to go to school. The school in our area is very bad, and so we would have told them to build better schools and find teachers to help those of us who attend. But they didn’t want to listen to us. They had their own ideas.
Maybe they are doing to right thing. But every child comes from a different home and a different situation, so they can’t use the same plan for all of us. They need to listen to every child they want to help. How could they help us properly if they don’t?