Sitting on an empty tomato-paste can on the sidewalk, arms folded around his head to cover him from the blistering sun, a young boy named Abou is trying to catch up on sleep. His day started well before dawn, with a 90-minute hike to the center of Senegal’s capital, Dakar. The frail and malnourished child, dressed in dirt-blackened rags, has walked all morning barefoot on baking roads, begging for food and a few coins to take back to his teacher and guardian. ``This is my life. I have no choice,’’ Abou says. Then, to a concert of honking horns, he rushes across the road to pick up a coin thrown from a car window.
Like the other children with whom he begs, Abou was placed in the care of spiritual guides, or marabouts, to be taught Islam and its holy book, the Quran. Abou has a mother and father, but was turned over to Quran school too young to remember them. He doesn’t know his age, but looks 9 at most. These tens of thousands of boys, some as young as 5, are known as talibe, meaning ``disciple’’ in Arabic. They come mostly from families struggling to feed too many children in Senegal’s arid countryside. Quranic schools are a tradition in Muslim West Africa, appearing in the 11th century in Senegal’s northern Fouta region. Down to Senegal’s independence from France in 1960, the schools were held in esteem. Many of Senegal’s leaders graduated from the schools. Today, urban sprawl, population growth and rural poverty mean Senegal has more of the schools than ever but comparatively fewer giving the boys a future in exchange for their childhood. Increasingly, marabouts are using the children as their work force legions laboring for the teachers at the unskilled job of begging, in the name of learning humility. ``How can I possibly take care of all of them?’’ demands Pape Seck, a 25-year-old marabout at a Quran school on the outskirts of Dakar, kicking a boy of about 4 in the head when the exhausted child dozes off during morning Quran study. |