AMNA NAWAZ: Well, the effects of the pandemic on children vary dramatically depending on
the country. With schools still shuttered in Uganda and other developing nations, many
children have no choice but to work to survive.
In Africa, more than a fifth of all children, or some 87 million kids, work.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Kampala.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It looks like a scene set in the Middle Ages, a gaping, sprawling
stone quarry just outside Uganda's capital.
It is also a gravel factory, all of it done by hand, large, small, and very small hands.
Evelyn is 11 years old. She works every day balancing on a makeshift ladder to crack open
the rock face. Her family will then pound the larger rocks into gravel with crude hammers.
For some, the only available tool is a larger rock. Evelyn's mother, Sylvia Naggujja, who
has done this work for more than a decade, labors by her side, next to six brothers and
sisters. For all this work, they earn less than $2 a day. That's the whole family.
SYLVIA NAGGUJJA, Mother (through translator): We go and break stones. Like, that plastic
jerrican you see there. We fill it at 300 shillings for each jerrican.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's exhausting, dangerous work, a scene repeated at dozens of sites
in the area. Accidents and injuries are common, especially among young children.
EVELYN, Uganda (through translator): Life is not OK. When I break these stones, sometimes,
they cut my fingers. Sometimes, the small pebbles fall into my eyes. Life is not good.
Another time, a big stone hit me on the head right here.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But what weighs on Evelyn most is her life before the pandemic. Aside
from a few weeks between Uganda's two COVID surges, schools have been shuttered across
this nation of 44 million.
EVELYN (through translator): I miss school. I miss work at school. I work every day. I
would like to be a doctor or a nurse. I wanted to go to school, go to university, possibly
go abroad and help my mother.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It is not uncommon to see young children doing hard work, fetching
water or wood for the family cook stove.
But, whether in quarries, mines, or farmland more and more children are being forced to
work for their survival. 2020 was the first year in two decades that saw an increase in
child labor around the world. And with the pandemic devastating economies, the United
Nations says the problem is getting much worse.
It issued a report that found 160 million children, some as young as 5, working in child
labor, many doing tasks that directly threaten their health and safety.
ANGELLA NABWOWE, Initiative For Social and Economic Rights: I saw a 9-year-old in a gold
mine.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: As the mother of a 9-year-old herself, human rights advocate Angella Nabwowe
says the encounter stopped her in her tracks.
ANGELLA NABWOWE: I was practically looking at my daughter doing that work. I talked to
this girl. She lives with her grandmother. They have nothing, nothing. A 9-year-old in
a gold mine working, it is not right. It's not.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: She says years of progress have been wiped out by the pandemic, as have
the income and prospects of a large number of Uganda's poorest people, who live hand-to-mouth
in the mostly informal economy.
ANGELLA NABWOWE: The urban areas, the official data is that 23 percent of that lost everything.
They do not have any source of what? Income, because of COVID-19.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's not just income, she says. For many children, the loss of school
has deprived them of a reliable meal each day. As we saw in this school in 2017, meals
are often provided across the developing world to boost both nutrition and attendance. That
all stopped when the schools closed.
ANGELLA NABWOWE: Food is a basic right. People don't have what to eat. And what is the effect
of that?
TYLER DUNMAN, Human Trafficking Institute: It's been pretty catastrophic.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Tyler Dunman, a lawyer with a human rights group, is on loan to Uganda's
director of public prosecutions. Unlike children such as Evelyn, who work with their parents,
many have been trafficked into labor, he says. It's illegal, but enforcement is spotty, complicated
further by the pandemic.
TYLER DUNMAN: Oftentimes, they're finding themselves on the streets begging, or being
forced to sell things, or, as they call it, hawking things here. Those situations have
increased exponentially.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So has trafficking into the sex trade, he says. Young women are particularly
vulnerable. And there's another risk. Social workers we talked to say they have seen a
spike in teen pregnancies.
ESTHER, Uganda (through translator): I'm 15 years old.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: We visited Esther in this Kampala slum. She enjoyed school and got good
grades, and, when school stopped, she took a job in a food stand to help out the family.
Then she became pregnant, the result of boredom and rebellion, she now admits. When the baby
arrives in February, school will be out of the question, impractical, she says, and unaffordable.
ESTHER (through translator): I was studying to become a doctor. I missed the company of
my friends. We used to sit down there. We would talk. We would be reading books.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: What is your dream for your future?
ESTHER (through translator): My dream is, if I have a chance, I want to learn how to
weave hair, do hair, and, in the process, be able to start my own business.
ROGERS MUTAAWE, Uganda Youth Development Link: How do they survive? Because their parents
cannot meet their basic needs.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Rogers Mutaawe runs the Uganda Youth Development Link, part of a team
of charities that work with at-risk youth. Since March of 2020, the number of young people
they're helping train for safer jobs has nearly doubled.
When we visited, they were learning baking, cupcakes on this day.
ROGERS MUTAAWE: And so we are trying our best as a program, as an organization to be able
to give them a second hope, to give them some future to their lives, because most cases
is young people have been vulnerable, they have been left alone, they have low self-esteem,
they have depression.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He took me to meet 14-year-old Christopher. Two years ago, he dreamed of
being a professional soccer player after completing school.
What was your favorite subject?
CHRISTOPHER, Uganda (through translator): Math and science.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Now he works from 4:00 in the morning until the national curfew at
7:00 p.m. at a food stand in Kampala's Banda slum. His mother, Harriet Namoulondo, sells
meat kebabs nearby.
It is not enough, she says.
Are you able to buy enough food for the family today?
HARRIET NAMOULONDO, Uganda (through translator): We do not eat after lunch. That's the end.
We stopped eating dinner long ago.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For its part, the government hopes to open schools by the new year, by
when, it hopes, teachers and staff will be vaccinated.
Health Minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng.
DR. JANE RUTH ACENG, Ugandan Minister of Health: We are losing a generation of people who would
later on become economically productive and steer this country ahead.
We are doing our best to ensure that we open schools as quickly as possible, but also open
schools not to close them again.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Opening schools is only step one in what many activists say is a long
road to repairing a public education system that is desperately short of the resources
children and their teachers need.
Although tuition is free, various fees and expenses for uniforms put school out of reach
for many low-income Ugandans. Evelyn's mom says she will do her best to send her and
her six siblings back when schools reopen.
SYLVIA NAGGUJJA (through translator): I dream for my children to be OK, to be able to support
themselves in the future, and also to be able to support me. I want my children to have
a good life.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: "For now, I'm grateful for one thing," she said. "None of my children
has gotten ill or seriously injured."
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro just outside Kampala, Uganda.
AMNA NAWAZ: And Fred's reporting is in partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the
University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.