The other night there was a benefit concert of sorts to raise money for Daara Vision which is one of the centers that offers some food and basic part time medical care for the talibé boys. One of the volunteers Dan organized the night and he had several acts sing including the very excellent and very popular Mame Szaabo (sp?) and even our very own Katie, a volunteer from Ireland. The backup band had two guitars, keyboards, drums and djembé drums and they were really good as well. As a side note I inquired about the meaning of talibé and discovered it means ‘disciple’ as the boys are studying the Koran. I have often seen it painted on the sides of buses and taxis so I assume it is a common enough thing to think of oneself as, if one were a devout follower of the Koran.
One of the interim acts before Mame Szaabo was a local guy named Bashir, who is attending university in Dakar for math, and is dating one of the volunteers who has decided to stay on and work full time, also in Dakar. He ‘slammed’ which is a style that is popular with younger Senegalese people. Slamming is basically spoken word with some major punch to it. The idea is to pick a topic and just start making up lyrics that sound good, or rhyme, or tell a story. It’s hard to describe his performance but he basically picked up the beat, spilled out some rhymes, and then hung out for a spell dancing and getting the crowd to clap and really get into what he was saying. His lyrics got louder and angrier though as he went into the part about the talibé boys. He described how we walk by them every day in the streets and how we think we’re being nice by tossing them a few coins into their plastic dishes but really there’s a much larger issue to address than just giving them money. He was asking everyone to really stop think about why they are there and in the state that they are in and man alive, was he ever passionate.
I was talking to my friend Hanne yesterday about how she started working at the talibé center as a means to learn more about the lives of the talibé boys. She was feeling like she has become accustomed to seeing disheveled homeless boys wandering around in the streets begging for money, so she decided to help herself have a closer experience with them by visiting the Daara center every day. I must say I have had the same experience myself where I am no longer shocked to see the boys lingering around outside the house waiting for leftovers, or seeing the boys running around the streets at all hours of the day with nothing else to do but play and beg. It’s not to say that I ignore them though. I give them my left over breakfast if there is any and also cookies and drinks if I am out and have something to share, I smile and say a friendly word, but I still never give money, and I still don’t really don’t know what else to do but raise some awareness around this issue.
There is one French Canadian lady who started with PA and has since left the program to do her own thing. She is always talking about how much money she pours into the Daara Center and I don’t mean to be too critical but I question the sustainability of what she is doing. Certainly she can’t have endless piles of money, and since she hasn’t been working for 8 months she will inevitably have to go back home to earn more money leaving the center without that income. I can only hope that all her efforts working with the locals will allow her to continue to move upwards in the system and eventually garner a position where she is able to solicit for more funding. Seemingly the government here in Senegal is taking a rather soft stance on the issue of the talibés.
For myself, I think I am spending more energy mentally than I am aware of every time I leave the house because there is so much to filter: the piles of rotten garbage everywhere; young undernourished boys, shoeless, digging through rotten garbage for something to eat; the old woman with no eyeballs begging every day on the bridge; the scene with an adult male man-handling a talibé boy because he thinks he stole something; the dogs with the fly eaten ears. It’s difficult because if I really start to think about each of these scenarios the situations descend almost into despair and I feel helpless, I feel powerless, I feel deeply sad, I feel like screaming! So, it is necessary to tuck that away somewhere in your head, so you can tap into it in order to stay in touch with your humanity, but more so to keep it from impeding you from doing what you do every day: tread lightly, and impart a little bit of what you're made of onto the people you meet every day.
No comments:
Post a Comment