Abena, a fourteen 14 year old teenage girl, is the fifth child of eight 8 children born to her parents in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region of Ghana. She travelled to Kumasi in April with the hope of a better standard of living. She narrated how she was inspired by other very young girls who left Bolga to work in Kumasi and later came back with assurance of a breakthrough in life; parading around with expensive phones, clothes, foodstuffs, money and other gadgets every teen dream of.
Abena is one of many girls who are victims of the rural urban migration. Many young boys and girls β often unaided β leave rural towns to urban centers in search of better economic opportunities and greener pastures, unknowingly what awaits them.
Regrettably, most of these young people end up on the streets. Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region, is the second-largest city in Ghana with huge commercial and industrial potential which attracts a lot of young migrants who move from various rural towns in search of opportunities and better economic conditions, some temporary and others permanently.
The city prides itself as a vital trade center for gold, cocoa and timber with a population of about 2 million inhabitants in its metropolitan area according to the world data review. Kayayei is a Ghanaian term that refers to female head porters or bearers. Most kayayeis are young girls often less educated or uneducated, unskilled, and poor from the rural and semi-urban parts of the three northern regions of Ghana.
As a result of the less paying menial jobs they mostly engage in, they often earn a little too insufficient to survive the harsh realities of urban living. Hence, these young girls take to prostitution β a situation which has become very alarming.
