Silent suffering

Senegalese media have been investigating the exploitation of talibés—children in West Africa who live at Muslim schools and often suffer abuse at the hands of their teachers (marabouts), sometimes through slavery, sometimes by way of pedophilia.

Recently, Aliou Tall, president of the African Network for the Defense of Users, Consumers, and Citizens denounced the pedophilia, homosexuality, and slavery practiced by some Quranic teachers in Senegal. He said, “The talibés are among the few children of the earth to undergo cumulatively all forms of abuse sanctioned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: abandonment or heavy negligence; physical and mental brutality; mistreatment; economic exploitation; sexual touching; and rape. Their martyrdom is the visible testimony that the business of faith has spread like gangrene in Senegal.”

Traditionally, poor parents send talibés from 3 to 14 years of age to marabouts to acquire a Quranic education. In return the child must help his master cultivate his fields and collect meals in the villages. Thousands of talibés live in West African cities, barefoot and in rags, waving a begging bowl at intersections or in front of shops.

To meet the requirements of their master and avoid a beating, they must often hang around adult venues and commit petty theft. With runny noses because of the cold morning air and faces swollen from lack of sleep, they suffer the pangs of long hours of work, often groaning under heavy loads they are asked to carry for a few cents.

The opening of Quranic schools does not generally require any legal criteria or investigation of the initiator’s morality. Under the pretext of inculcating Quranic knowledge into those children, some teachers abuse them. Cases of sexual abuse in Senegal include one in 2010 where an 82-year-old imam, who led the prayers in the mosque of Medina in Rufisque for the last 20 years, sodomized a 15-year-old boy. That same year a 12-year-old student accused a Quranic teacher in the Dial Mbaye neighborhood of Guédiawaye of having forced sex on her for a year.

Other notable cases: In 2011, in a Quranic school located in Pikine Icotaf, another teacher sexually abused two of his talibés. In 2013 an assistant of the imam of Serigne Mansour Sy mosque of Guédiawaye abused one of his talibés. In Touba, the holy city of Islam for many Senegalese, a Quranic teacher molested dozens of girls. In the district of Keur Massar, a 17-year-old girl who became pregnant said a very well-known marabout, deemed to be pious, raped her.

Christians may throw stones at Muslims for these transgressions against children, but we should remember that plenty of dirty linen sits in our own closets. Students abused in schools in the United States must be brave to come forward, but they know they have some legal redress. In Senegal, many victims stay silent because they have seen a lack of penal response to other cases. Some fear to prosecute Quranic teachers because some say they will take revenge via their knowledge of mystical evil.

How many applicances does one household need?

Three years ago my wife and I lived on a food stamp diet for two months and found we could do it with heavy reliance on oatmeal, black beans and corn, roasted squash and sweet potatoes, homemade pizza and popcorn, and an apple a day. (See “Living on SNAP,” WORLD, Feb. 25, 2012.) This past fall we had an unplanned experiment that also showed us we don’t need everything we think we need.

Here’s what happened: We moved back to our Texas home (for most of the year) for child and grandchild reasons, but it badly needed a new kitchen. Flooring, electricity, tiling, and plumbing fell way behind schedule, so for a month we lived without a refrigerator, stove, microwave, dishwasher, and other things that more than 95 percent of American households now have.

We did have an electric kettle that gave us hot water into which we poured packets of instant oatmeal supplemented by flax seeds and powdered peanut butter. We discovered milk in individual boxes that didn’t need refrigeration. We rediscovered the joy of canned black and garbanzo beans. Every two or three days we’d replenish our supply of apples, oranges, and carrots.

We did average a restaurant dinner or lunch every third day, so this was not a food stamp budget, but in a pinch we could have survived without those. We live by love, not by immaculate dinners and the appliances that prepare them.

—Samen Feumba has been a teacher and journalist in Chad, Congo, Burkina Faso, and the Central African Republic