More on talibes begging for their madrassas

My friend Maimuna sent me an Associated Press article on young Muslim boys from Guinea-Bissau sent away to study with marabouts/serignes/ustas (Koranic teachers) in Senegal. The students/talibes support their schools/madrassas by begging:

It's big business in Senegal. In the capital of Dakar alone, at least 7,600 child beggars work the streets, according to a study released in February by the ILO, the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Bank. The children collect an average of 300 African francs a day, just 72 cents, reaping their keepers $2 million a year.

Most of the boys — 90 percent, the study found — are sent out to beg under the cover of Islam, placing the problem at the complicated intersection of greed and tradition. For among the cruelest facts of Coli's life is that he was not stolen from his family. He was brought to Dakar with their blessing to learn Islam's holy book.

This made me think anew about my friend Bubacarr's little dara/Koranic school in Thies, Senegal, many hours from Njau, Gambia.

At Bubacarr's dara/madrassa the begging is done in lieu of farming, which young students often carry out as payment to teachers in rural areas. Since Thies is a big city, there is no farmland so relying on alms (one of Islam's five pillars) is the avenue pursued to support the school (and everyone's feeding).

While I am still dubious about the overall merits of the boarding dara/madrassa system (far from home, more time spent begging than studying), Bubacarr's did have a few saving graces. These are that the talibes are all from Njau, so they and their families know Bubacarr well, and see him whenever he returns to visit the village. Also, although difficult, life at the school did not seem too harsh (although some of this may have been due to my visit) -- everyone ate fairly well (as well as or perhaps better than they do in Njau) and the kids had spare money that they could spend on icees (frozen sugar-baobab/hibiscus drinks). But it's probably one of the better ones.

Of course, most of these boys had the decision to travel to Bubacarr's dara foisted upon them by their parents. I would have preferred they went to Njau's government school, but people value religious knowledge and can't always see the benefit of western education. And I'm sure the boys missed their families.

Regarding the article's thrust on child labour, I am again unsure exactly how to think of this. As the author mentions, some returned boys began working in their home villages. Rescuing them from their serignes/marabouts certainly won't spare these children from contributing their labour to their families' livelihood.

A Madrassa in the City

I had long promised to visit my friend Bubacarr, who works as an Ustas (Koranic teacher) at a dara/madrassa in Thies, Senegal's second city, during the dry season. Bubacarr comes home to Njau to farm during the rainy season, so that's how I know him. So it was that, after the Magal and a stopover in Dakar, I came to visit Thies.

I expected that some parents in Njau and other villages had left their sons in Bubacarr’s tutelage. I was surprised to discover, though, that all of his talibes/students were from around Njau, having moved 300 kilometres away to Thies. It seemed to me counterintuitive that Bubacarr, an Njau native, and his talibes would leave their homes and families for an expensive, unfamiliar city in another country. As it turns out, the rationale is economic.

If Bubacarr’s madrassa were in Njau, parents would not be able to pay him for his services. There are rural madrassas where children toil in their Ustas’s fields (see my July 18 2006 post on this), but Bubacarr lacks the land for this to be a viable option.

Moving to Thies proved feasible, though. The talibes’ parents still don’t have any money, and there’s no subsistence work available, but one can get by thanks to the West African and Islamic values of hospitality and zakat (alms giving), respectively.

Bubacarr rents a compound where he and his 40 or so students live and study. With water fees (there’s a tap in the compound), rent comes to 12,000 CFA (about $22) a month – a heady sum when your students have no money, nor food. This is where the aforementioned kindness of strangers, prescribed by social and religious norms, comes in.

The talibes spend a couple of hours every morning out with old tomate paste cans (for taking collections), offering prayers to people kind enough to make a contribution. A similar thing happens at lunch and dinner. The children return home with extra rice from compound food bowls and divvy it up at meal times. Bubacarr, too, has a couple of neighbours that provide him with meals, out of respect for the work he does teaching children the Koran and Islamic values.

The talibes study for a few hours before and after lunch, and for another hour or so at night. Older students teach the younger boys, with Bubacarr there to teach the older guys and to answer questions that come up. Bubacarr likened his role to that of my headmaster at Njau’s primary school.

So Bubacarr’s dara relies solely on charity to operate. At first this seemed unrealistic, but if every kid collects 25-50 CFA a day that works out to 1000-2000 CFA. Bubacarr had enough to splurge 2500 CFA on dinner for us (leaving me feeling a little sheepish), and is even contemplating renting a slightly nicer room. The funds also supported his two wives (now three as he has married his brother’s widow) and children at home in Njau.

So the urban dara system, in this case, works quite well financially. On the other hand, living quarters are cramped, the diet’s not great (but on a par with Njau), and Bubacarr and his talibes are far from home. Also, one boy is there simply because he ran out of money to attend government school, and Bubacarr has poached a few other kids from Njau’s primary school. It would be nice if more children simply took the two track approach – about 30 Njau LBS students pay for extra Koranic classes with the school’s Ustas – rather than making it an either/or proposition, but the money’s simply not there to support a madrassa in Njau.

Addendum: I did a brief Internet search on talibes, and most posts deplored the living conditions of dara students. Although the living conditions are difficult, I saw a generally happy atmosphere at Bubacarr’s school, and the talibes seemed to be treated reasonably well.