Ndary has a reason to laugh

He soon won’t be a ghost anymore

Usually when I visit my project, I am simply delighted that for 10 years we have enabled hundreds of girls and women to graduate in the professions of tailoring, hairdressing and cooking. Yes, and of course the 100 children of the kindergarten Keur Mame Fatim Konté, as the centre is called, are always a source of joy.

It is a good thing that the Leona Centre, which opened almost ten years ago and was built with help alliance funds, opens up prospects for young people in the poor Leona district of Saint-Louis in the north of Senegal, is a meeting place for various associations, and offers the inhabitants free medical examinations once or twice a year.

How infinitely more difficult it is there, if you look at the situation of the Koran students of the quarter. Giving help here always remains a challenge. Ndary is a Talibé.

There are several Koran schools in the quarter, which are run by so-called marabouts. The centre has maintained good relations with two marabouts for years. From there, the approximately 50 boys who are alphabetized at the center on two afternoons a week, get something to eat, wash their clothes, take a shower, etc.

Mostly the children come from far away villages, are left by their parents to attend the Koran schools, which is not reprehensible socially in the Islamic influenced Senegal, because every child has to learn the Koran and so the Koran schools officially serve a good purpose. Since the parents pay nothing for the maintenance, the children have to go begging or do small jobs. For the poor families they are just one eater less and supposedly taken care of by the marabouts.

The situation in the Daaras, the Koran schools, is so unbearable that the children live like street children, they do not like to stay in the run-down buildings. The Koran lessons take only a few hours a day and the children do not go to school.

If they don’t go back to their villages later, which is often not a real alternative, they have only the lowest level of employment. I met an adult, former Koran student while cleaning the toilets at the school that Ndary now attends.

Ndary absolutely wanted to go to school. The staff of the centre mediated between the Koran teacher and the school Boly Diaw, which 10 years ago got the first internet café financed by the help alliance.

There is still a big administrative hurdle to be overcome, because Ndary has no birth certificate, actually he cannot be enrolled at any school without this document. According to the BMZ he shares the fate of 59 percent of all children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Children who are not registered simply do not officially exist, they can disappear without leaving any traces.

Angelique Kidjo, Unicef ambassador from the Ivory Coast, once said: “If a child does not have a birth certificate, it is robbed of its future. He lives invisibly, like a ghost.”

Hopefully, soon Ndary won’t be a ghost anymore. His story is a small but great success for the work of the help alliance in Leona.