Consider the case of two street children in Limbe, boys aged 12 and 7. Daily they come out of their overnight hideout behind the shops to spend the day begging, being beaten by older street boys, and being insulted by passers-by. Why does this happen? Because two years previously their blind mother, who lived by begging, died. But doesn't this destitute family have a home village? Yes, but it is in Nsanje where, unlike other districts where there are NGOs working alongside the local social welfare offices, there are no such NGOs - after all, the district is difficult to access, and has a poor road network, an extremely hot, humid climate, and an abundance of mosquitoes.

The $400 per month that the government gives Nsanje social welfare department for childcare is meant to provide care for those of the 40,000 children in the area who most need it. In a country with over 1 million orphaned and vulnerable children it is an impossible task, so it is not surprising that, given the presence of child prostitution, destitution, and trafficking, the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Community Development allows social welfare offices to source funding from donors.

The HIV infection rate is 14%, 2% higher than the national rate (though the figures are down from 3 years ago when they were 19% and 14%). It is not helped by certain traditional cultural practices in the district, practices which the government seeks to criminalise in a proposed new law. The child rights organisation, Eye of the Child, is campaigning vigorously for a redistribution of government resources in favour of districts which have fewer NGOs, in the hope that this will help to alleviate the situation of disadvantaged districts like Nsanje, along with that of the street children in the towns who know there is no point in going "home".