In Kampala, the homeless pay ‘rent’ for sleeping on verandahs

Deep in the night, at around 1am, I meet 13-year-old *Fred seated beside a group of sleeping young men on a verandah near Tropical Bank on Kampala Road. He immediately greets me and tells me he has no money, but that he would pay me the next day.
After introducing myself, he sighs with relief and tells me he thought I was one of the individuals or part of gangs that extort “rent” from those who sleep by the roadside.

Fred further tells me that together with his group, they found refuge at the verandah of the bank after realising that the security officer who guards the place was humane enough to let them sleep there unlike other security guards on some buildings.
Fred explains that the reason he is awake while his colleagues are sleeping is because they have to sleep in shifts such that when their tormentors turn up, the one who is awake alerts the others and they run away.

“Sometimes when we have money, we pay and sleep in peace but if we don’t have, we sleep in shifts such that when we notice danger, we relocate to another street,” Fred narrates.
The 13-year- old from Kyazanga-Masaka District says failure to pay “rent” for a sleeping space doesn’t only earn them strokes of the cane, but the “landlords” also search them and take every penny they find on them.

He explains that they had shifted from Kisenyi, where the trend had taken its toll on them, to uptown Kampala.
However, their main fear here is the patrol police officers, who he says usually cane them whenever they seek refuge on uptown streets such as Kampala Road, Nkurumah Road, Speak Road, Nile and Luwum Avenues, among others.

At a small fee, the group offers to guide me to several places where the homeless pay to sleep, cautioning me about falling victim of violence if I attempt to move around Kampala without security or other street dwellers in the middle of the night.
Advised to remove my shirt and fold my trousers to reduce the room for suspicion, the group guides me around the city in several areas, including Kisenyi, Katwe, bus terminals, parks and the notorious Nakivubo channel.

Inside Nakivubo channel, there is a group of around 30 boys and men who sleep there after paying some money or in exchange for drugs. The boys avail me marijuana rolled in a white paper that I give to a mean-looking young man, whom they address as Nsomiina, before he offers me a piece of rag and space.
Moving to Kisenyi, I am guided to a place called Kibaati, where the corridors go for Shs500 per night. Later, I am guided to rickety rooms which happen to be sleeping places/ lodges and kind of brothels, which the group claim is a popular sleeping place for the homeless.

I am guided to a room where they ask me to pay Shs4,000, but before I ask for the exact room, a gang surrounds me and one punches me in the stomach. The boys plead for mercy on my behalf. I pay Shs10,000 and they offer me a skimpily dressed woman as a bonus for sleeping space.

On my second day, as agreed, I meet the group again at New Tax Park, where we are joined by other members, who escort us to Katwe-Kinyoro, where most of the Karimojong street children are said to dwell.

At around 2am, we meet 15-year-old *Esther with a fractured leg and she tells us a gang had been chasing her and she got her leg fractured after being hit by a speeding boda boda. Pulling herself along Cornerstone Plaza towards Usafi Taxi Park, she tells us she had delayed on the street and ended up sleeping at Mukwano arcade before the gang pounced on her.
At Katwe, the Karimojong rent temporary structures built with mud, grass and tarpaulin at Shs1,000 per day. However, some who have stayed for long in Kampala have their own structures.

*Agnes, who we find sleeping on a verandah in Katwe Kinyoro, tells us the issue of being charged to sleep on the streets, even though it is dismissed by some of their leaders, has been there for long. She notes that it is a development that was started by security guards who used to ask for sex from them to be protected lest they get chased away.
“Sometimes the security guards lure us into sex to gain favours from them. That is how we sometimes end up with fatherless children. This is why we had to desert streets in downtown for those in the city centre,” Esther explains.
*Owen,17, who says he came from Lugazi in Buikwe District five years ago following the death of his guardians, explains that paying for sleeping space is a practice that was started about two years ago by the infamous Kifeesi street gangs.

Owen explains that the gangs zoned Kampala downtown, giving zone names such as Naked City, Kanywamusaayi, Nkwakyo and many more, with each area gazzeted for a particular gang. He says crossing into a zone where you are not known results in bloody fights.
“If you crossed into a “foreign territory”, you would be made to pay an extra fee or risk being beaten. In territories such as Naked City [Kisenyi], we would be charged Shs500 per night but when you cross to Kibaati, you pay Shs1,000,” Owen explains.

He reveals that there are no permanent people who collect the money from them but different people under similar groups. He says the only section of homeless people who are spared are the persons with disabilities, whose main home is a veranda on a building that houses several shops on Ben Kiwanuka Street.
Some security guards tell me they also charge between Shs1,000 and 2,000 for sleeping space on the verandahs in their jurisdiction, especially when it is raining.

“At night, the vulnerable become prey to the streetwise gangs who move around collecting money from them. This is why some of the homeless choose to sleep outside Kampala city,” a security guard explains.
It is evident that most of Kampala homeless are children between eight and 17 years, who engage in petty activities like collecting plastic water bottles and vending eggs for survival. At the end of the day, they earn between Shs3000 and Shs5000 for their effort.
*Isaac, 14, another street boy, tells me they cannot afford to pay for sleeping space.

Just like many others, Isaac says sometimes they are arrested by the patrolling military police in the middle of the night, made to move around the city and sometimes get beaten.
He adds that uptown Kampala, which would be a safe haven for the homeless since few or no criminal gangs operate from there, is proving a no-go zone for them because of the violence they suffer at the hands of patrol police officers and security guards.
He also cites rain and suspected prostitutes who brutalize them whenever they attempt to sleep in dark corridors near their brothels, especially in Kisenyi and near City House, as the other main challenge they face on the streets at night.

Names of the people interviewed in the story were changed to protect their identities.