Chicago, Angola "My life is bad. I just shine. I want a proper job"

Chicago is a 16-year old shoe-shine boy who makes his living polishing the shoes of passers-by.

"I can earn 400 or 500 kwanza [US $10] a day. I work from six o'clock in the morning until six o'clock at night - 12 hours every day. I don't think anything about the future. I'm not very happy but I have to work. My life is bad. I just [shoe] shine. I want a proper job.

"When I came to Luanda three years ago, I tried to study but it was expensive and I couldn't go to school and earn money at the same time. So I got a job shining shoes but now I can't study. I'm not happy, no, because I can't earn enough to get food. I'm short of food and I can't see the opportunity to change anything. I have only 10 kwanza and I'm hungry. I have nothing, nothing left except painful memories. We saw so much war. My mother and I left Bie province [the scene of much of the fighting] and came here, but my father stayed. I don't know what happened to him. My mother is sick, she's in the hospital so I stay with my uncle. I try to give my mother some money sometimes. My uncle helps and he feeds me when I go home to his house, but it's very, very difficult.

"I want to leave shoe-shining and find another job. If I could make enough money I would leave here and go back to Bie province because there has to be more opportunities there. This is no life, I feel it in my head and my heart. This is not living."