“Every day I try not to cry. Every day I try not to scream.
I do not sleep, I just close my eyes and imagine myself in a different place.
I do not know who my family is, I just know that I'm not from here.”
Amadou, 15 year old Talibe.
Talibe is an Arabic term for disciple.
Throughout Senegal, children follow an old practice of begging for their religious guardians called Marabouts.
What tries to pass as a form of education is only a way of business for those exploiting children everyday.
What should be a school is in fact, sometimes, a place of torture.
Quranic schools known as Daaras are no more than fragile buildings where attrocities happen every single day to children between 5 and 15 years old, that are forced to spend more than 8 hours a day begging in the streets, for money, rice and sugar. The rest of their time is spent learning the Quran, while the marabout collects their daily earnings.
According to a Human Rights Watch report, the number of Talibes is increasing and are more than 30,000 boys subjected to forced begging in the Dakar region alone.
Parents often send their children to study the Quran because they simply can't afford their education, others just believe that a Daara is a good solution but in the other hand children trafficking plays a crucial part in today's numbers. Most of the Talibes are senegalese but the number of children from neighbooring countries like Guinea-Bissau has increased, becoming an important part of this phenomenon.
In 2005, Senegal adopted a law that prohibits forced begging and trafficking but the results have been disappointing so far. Recently, the government anti-trafficking unit made the first census in the country's history over 1000 quranic schools but the draft of the law that regulates the numerous schools in Senegal is yet to pass on Parliament. In the meantime, the abusers continue to exploit children without any type of concern of law being applied against them.