As night falls many of these children head for the old crumbling sewers built a century ago by the Portuguese that form a complex maze under Luanda, where the kids compete with rats for scraps of food. As daybreak dawns it's back onto the streets and a life of hawking merchandise, washing cars or simply begging or stealing to survive and buy drugs or gasoline to sniff, an habitual way to escape reality and pain, putting themselves at even further risk of abuse including sexual exploitation. In Angola police round-ups of street children are not legal unless they can demonstrate any such round-up is in order to execute a judicial order or warrant, where there are unauthorised gatherings, in case of public danger or emergency or where there is disturbance of the public order. Police in the country are genrally wary of the street children as officers who make arrests without demonstrable due cause can be held criminally responsible for abuse of authority.

As in many countries, these street children in Angola have few opportunities to escape this cycle of deprivation and live without access to education or medical care. Nearly 70% of births are not registered in Angola effectively meaning these children do not exist in the eyes of the authorities so when many 'disappear' no-one notices save for the others in the gangs they belong to. There are a number of agencies attempting to provide support for these children, but their main potential support, their families, are often not there having been killed, displaced, or are too poor to take back yet another mouth to feed in a country where around 68% live on less that $2.00 a day.