Packs of girls line the streets, sitting asleep in oversized tin bowls. Colorful scarves cover their hair. They have on flowing gauze skirts and rubber flip-flops wedged over muddy tube socks. Dark scars run down their cheeks like teardrops, unlike the speck on one cheek of most hailing from the Ashanti Region.

Crowds of Ashantis shuffle past these huddled girls. Mismatching aprons identify their purpose. They are a fixture, no different than the open gutter littered with small plastic bags that drinking water was once sold in. But like the empty bags in a city that has only a handful of trashcans, they don’t belong.

Anything that can be eaten is sold in a plastic bag. If it was packaged in a factory, the wrapper might be stamped with the suggestion "Keep Ghana Clean" and a picture of a stick figure throwing little squares in a bin. Most people of Ghana have never seen the shape that the crude symbol depicts. Telling a Ghanaian to throw away an empty bag is like telling one of these girls on the sidewalk to go home and get a job.

These girls are kayayoo, or porters, who have migrated from the northern regions of Ghana to eke out a living in the cities of Accra and Kumasi. The tin bowls are used to carry loads of goods atop their heads for whatever tips they can scrape up. They literally guard their bowls with their lives while resting, leaving nothing but each other to guard their young, fragile bodies.

Much of the time they sit waiting for work to come along, disillusioned by the myth of quick cash that lured them into the city. Perhaps a girl has a sister who had run south and painted a pretty picture of city life to hide the reality of her misfortune. Her family may or may not know where she is, but one thing is for certain – nobody knew she was leaving home until she was gone, save a confidante sibling.

Their apparent idleness is deceptive; kayayoo are always ready to break loose and fight their comrades for a job. Inside the threshold of the market, kayayoo weave through market stalls and throngs of merchants, straining under the weight of their loads and yelling "ago" or "make way" in Twi.

A girl who steps off a nine-hour bus ride with nothing but a plastic bag in hand is never alone. Thousands of kayayoo share her fate. They band together with girls who migrated from the same northern village, town or region to form miniature communities.

Ayisha Abubakar, a 19-year-old kayayoo, arrived in Kumasi several months ago after her parents could no longer afford to pay her school fees. She hopes to save enough money to return home and finish school. But the work is difficult, she says, and severe leg pain had kept her from making any money for the past two weeks.

"They [families] don’t have the money to take care of us," said Abubakar, "but if they know that you come for just kayayoo, they won’t allow." She was lucky to have a sister with an apartment where she could stay in Kumasi – at least for a little while. When her sister gave birth to triplets, Abubakar left to join thousands of kayayoo in their fate of sleeping in rows along storefronts at night.

While northern daughters are pressured to acquire cloth, cooking utensils and other goods before entering marriage, their families look down upon kayayoo work as a means of procuring these coveted goods. Yet the north is devoid of economic opportunity, and without any specialized skills, the south leaves these girls with few desirable options.

Lack of opportunity in the north is no accident. Great Britain engineered a development scheme over the course of several decades to fit their trade goals.

Even before the British had a colonial foothold in the modern country of Ghana, trade and economic activity flowed south all along the Guinea Coast of West Africa. So when did the economic rift between north and south become such a burden to the people of Ghana?

Look no further than Accra, the capital, or just north of it to Kumasi, the capitol of the Ashanti Region. These southern cities are relics of the systematic underdevelopment of the north during colonial rule. They are the economic centers that rural and northern Ghanaians flood into as a last resort.

Colonialism isn’t the only culprit of this migratory phenomenon. The short rainy season in the north drives family members south in search of work during the dry months.

Ghana was once the frontrunner in pan-African independence, leading a wave of colonial upheaval. As the country approaches its 50-year anniversary in 2007, it still paves the way in political peace and stability.

Now Ghana faces the issue of moving towards economic stability - a challenge that can’t be met so long as half the country mourns its daughters who are running away, and families must tear themselves apart to survive.

The developmental framework of colonialism runs deep, and the reality is that it isn’t going away anytime soon. Ghanaians have adapted to, and will continue to adapt to, modern development. The key lies in creating real opportunities for those left behind in the colonial and post-colonial shuffle.

People of Ghana are indeed trying to help themselves and address the inadequacies of street life so prevalent in the big cities. The Kumasi Street Children Project is a non-governmental organization (NGO) run by Ghanaian volunteers. The project now sponsors over 140 children by sending them to school or to skilled apprenticeships – avenues out of unskilled street labor that don’t come cheap. Its budget for the first year was a rough equivalent of $123,000. The project may soon come to an abrupt end, unless its volunteers find grants and private donors to keep it going.

"We are hoping and praying that things will work out positively," said Program Officer Phyllis Eduful. "It will be pathetic to start off and get caught in the middle."

Similarly, Youth Alive, an NGO in the northern regions of the country, is struggling to address a growing generation youth who leave their families to find work on the streets. Youth Alive relies on Comic Relief, a charity in the United Kingdom, for funding. If Comic Relief withdraws support, Youth Alive will collapse.

The Kumasi Street Children Project and Youth Alive have several things in common. Both were started with the help of ActionAid International, one of the United Kingdom’s largest international development charities. Both have been successful in alleviating child street labor on a small scale, and yet both are on the brink of extinction.

What these and other NGO’s have is the potential to reverse a cycle of street life that has grown out of skewed economic opportunities. What they don’t have is enough funding to thrive.

And without such projects, young kayayoo are locked into a cycle that their children will inherit.

Note from the author: Phyllis Eduful is program coordinator for the Kumasi Street Children Project. The KSCP is a small division of the Centre for the Development of People, but you won't be able to find any link to it through the larger NGO. To donate directly to the KSCP or to coordinate a fundraising effort, you can contact Phyllis Eduful at phylled@yahoo.com.

See other photos taken by Julia Lebetkin of the porters

Julia's story