Kids beg for hours to fund Muslim teachers
Moussa doesnât know how old he is or how long he has been in Dakar begging for money to keep his Muslim schoolteacher from beating him. But he knows what he wants to be when he grows up â a white man. Malnourished children stretching out their hands for a coin are a common sight in many African cities, but in this most western tip of the continent, it is not poverty driving them onto the streets but adults. Moussa is one of thousands of Senegalese boys, plucked from their rural roots and sent to religious schools â daaras - in the cities to learn about Islam and memorise its holy book, the Koran.
Yet the pupils, known as talibes or disciples, learn little, forced to spend 10 hours a day trudging the streets for coins so they can pay their marabout teachers and for scraps so they can feed themselves. âI have to take 200 CFA (36 cents) back to my marabout every night,â Moussa mumbled, digging in a tomato-paste tin for that dayâs collection of coins. It is early evening in one of Dakarâs more affluent suburbs and the boy, who looks no older than seven, doesnât have even half the required amount. âIf Iâm short, the teacher hits me with a stick,â Moussa said resignedly. He rubbed at a red scar on his forehead from a beating last week as he explained how there was only one thing he wanted to be when he was older. âI want to be a white man.â Some marabouts argue that they have no other way of providing for the boys, that they had the same upbringing and that begging teaches the children humility. But these reasons donât convince everyone.
âObviously weâre not talking about all marabout teachers, but for some it has reached the point where children are a business,â said Lahad Ndiaye, who works for the Synapse Network Center, a Dakar-based group that has tried to help the talibes. âItâs exploitation pure and simple. You see kids who canât recite even two verses of the Koran. They donât have time to learn because theyâre on the street all day.â The United Nations Childrenâs Fund (UNICEF) estimates there are up to 100,000 child beggars in Senegal â about one percent of the population â and âtalibe children are the vast majorityâ. âI think the problem is growing,â Mamadou Wane, a UNICEF child protection officer, said in an interview in his Dakar office. âPoverty is hitting rural areas ever harder here, meaning more kids in the city daaras,â he continued.
Daaras have been around since the seventeenth century and in their original incarnation were based in villages. Parents would send their children to work the maraboutâs fields in return for a religious education. But in the last 50 years or so, bad droughts shrivelled crops to dust, the national economy spluttered and the marabouts joined the exodus to the cities. There, riches proved equally elusive, and for some sending their pupils to beg was a neat solution. âThe marabouts have no salary and they have to support 20 to 30 kids, itâs impossible,â said Babacar Sene, a Muslim elder in Ouaka, one of the outer suburbs of Dakar. Sene is well known in the local community, where a number of marabouts operate but refused to discuss their operations.
âI donât agree with begging, itâs irritating. But itâs a thorny problem to solve. What else can the marabouts do?â added the 76-year-old, who chose to send his 23 children to French-speaking schools and teach them the Koran at home. Senegal is a religiously tolerant country where many Muslims even celebrate Christmas and Islamic militancy is limited to the odd Osama bin Laden T-shirt. But even so, when some 95 percent of the population is Muslim, tackling the talibe problem is a delicate business. âThe fact that people can talk about it now, thatâs already progress,â said UNICEFâs Wane.
The UN group has been involved in projects since the early 90s. It has worked with village chiefs to set up 40 community daaras so children can stay close to families and has developed a French and Arab curriculum for Koranic teachers to use. Other organisations like Dakar-based development organisation, ENDA have set up contact points in the bigger towns where the child beggars can eat, get access to water and interact with different adults. âItâs about giving them a variety of reference points, beyond the marabout,â one of the organisers Moustapha Diop explained.
For while some talibes like Moussa dream of nothing but escape, others have adapted to the early-morning hitch-hike into town, begging for most of the day, squeezing in study late at night and having to sleep on flattened cardboard boxes. The aid workers at Synapse Network Center, a locally based Non governmental organisation, discovered first-hand how difficult it can be to break the talibe habit when they set up a drop-in centre. Within five months, the boys had all dropped out. âThey had already got the taste for the street, they had the notion of liberty while out begging⊠and they had got used to keeping any extra money they collected,â said Ndiaye.
A group of talibes squatting in the midday sun by a bench in Dakarâs main square illustrate the point. They admitted missing their parents, and living in worse conditions now then when they were at home but said they were happy. âWeâre lucky, we get to keep some of what we earn on the street, not like some talibes. I want to stay here and learn until I can be a marabout myself,â 10-year-old Umar said with a grin.
His friend Seydou, sporting a digital watch and fashionable if dirty shorts, announced proudly how he had been at a French school three years ago and then left to join the daara: âIt was my own decision. I like the Koran more and I want to be a marabout.â But as UNICEFâs Wane points out not every talibe can become a marabout. âTo have a future they need to learn agricultural skills or Wolof or French,â he said. âThere needs to be an institutional response. Koranic schools should be recognised⊠then transformed so they have to provide a basic general or professional education,â he said.
The government, conscious of the countryâs secular status, is currently grappling with reforms. According to newspaper Le Soleil, it wants to âgive all schools a structure which produces an educated and competent citizen who has religious values and is ready to participate in his countryâs development.â For Cire Kane, another Synapse Network worker, the talibe problem should be a priority. âWhen these kids grow up they wonât have the skills to find work and theyâll stay on the streets. Senegal is preparing a time-bomb for itself.â
Posted by: TS(vice girl) 2004-05-24 |