The conditions people living in were bad. Shanty towns of thousands of one roomed shacks squashed between poorly built high-rise flats. As many as ten people would live in these huts made of wood, mud and corrugated iron. No sanitation or legal electricity and limited access to running water. Babies and children would play in the dirt beside open sewers.
While visiting the project a young girl walks in with one of the older girls, Megan takes up the story.
‘She was a new admission brought in by the children’s services department. Her mother had died and she had been ‘adopted’ by an uncle. He got a job in Dubai and left the girl in the care of a neighbour. The girl has obviously been severely abused. She had a scar on the back of her neck from a human bite and a ring shaped welted sore around one thigh where I imagine someone has applied a tourniquet. She has many other scars, but the poor little girl seemed so frightened, that I didn’t want to add to her trauma by seeing them. It turns out that children were often abandoned at home whilst their parents or carers went to look for work, money and food.’