Roaming Around

The donut seller has a round belly. "How did you get pregnant?" asks the unseen interviewer. The girl smiles shyly: "You don't get enough money selling donuts." A young boy gets a child's plaster stuck on the back of his head at a Catholic hospital. The wound is the result of a vicious attack. Another boy, who has a bad rash, has to swallow his pills on the spot, to make sure he doesn't go and sell them. Roaming Around is a range of modest portraits of street children trying to survive in the Ghanaian capital. They scavenge on the waste dumps, play football on the beach, are bored at school, play a game of table football, do some fetching & carrying, watch violent videos and rob bus passengers of their baggage. In the meantime, Amma Darko reads fragments from her autobiographical book Faceless, in which she compares the depraved situation in Accra with Sodom & Gomorra. The different children, each of whom is introduced with a frozen image, have their own reasons why they have got into this situation. Usually problems with their father or mother, or the loss of one or both of these. They see their choice for the street as an escape into a life without fear. But there is no easy way back. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)