On January 13, I saw a boy who had been hit by a motorcycle lying on the street in the town of Louga. He was sobbing and holding his leg, which appeared to be broken. But this was no simple accident. This child was one of over 100,000 talibés in Senegal whose Quranic teachers send them out every morning to beg.
After the talibé was taken to the hospital, I went with my research partner from the Senegalese human rights coalition PPDH (Plateforme pour la Promotion et la Protection des Droits Humains) to find the child's Quranic teacher. While his 20 talibés were begging in the streets, he was fast asleep in the Quranic school (daara). Another talibé from the daara told us that they had to bring back 250 francs CFA [US $0.40] each day. This is not education. This is exploitation, coupled with negligence – the child who brought us to the daara also had an infected, untreated wound on his hand.
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