Distributing Beignets

Today I went with a group of other volunteers to help distribute the beignets. We walked to a Talibe centre sponsored by projects abroad called espoir (hope). There we met up with a few Senegalese guys who worked for the centre who would take us around to the Daaras where we would distribute the beignets to the Talibe. Before we left however, the guy who ran the centre gave a good 10 minute speech in Frolof (French-Wolof) about brotherhood, honest work, and other things that seemed far too emotional for a Monday morning. As we began to leave I asked Sara what the speech was about. She told me that last week one of the guys who worked at the centre turned another one in for smoking weed. Getting caught smoking weed here carries a heavy penalty of two months in a Senegalese prison, so this was a pretty big accusation. The guy accused had been arrested last Thursday, and had spent a day in prison where he was given no food, until he was cleared of the charges. I don’t think that either of those guys were there today, but it was just some big controversy. Anyway I digress.

We walked along the road and went to 5 or 6 different Daaras distributing the beignets to every Talibe there. There were a couple half decent places that didn’t look like they would be that miserable to live in, and then there were those that were, well, miserable. One in particular made a pretty  deep impression on me. It was situated about 15 minutes away from the centre, and the road to get there was filled with makeshift sewage systems and stagnant odors. I was told by one of the Senegalese guys taking us there that this Daara was nicknamed “le Daara de mouches” or the Daara of flys. I soon found out why. The place was extremely dirty, and flies occupied 20% of my visual field. I peeked into one of the rooms where the children were memorizing pages of the Koran, and saw… hardly anything. The room was poorly lit, and at first all I saw was twenty sets of white eyes staring up at me. The pleasant smell of the beignets must have alerted them to my presence;  a fresh shift from the foul odor of feces that seeped out from the nearby bathrooms. I threw the sachets of beignets out to the children, and they all wolfed them down ferociously. Not too many “mercies” though. I guess that they don’t teach manners here, only useful things like the Koran. I am sure they will all have very successful lives.

Religion   1

Progress  0