Hell hath no fury...

We have a new child staying at the house with us. He is a talibe (pronounced tahlee-bay), which means he is a student of the Quoran and under the instruction of a maribou (pronounced mariboo). Often when families don’t have enough money to support their children, they will give them to a maribou who promises to instruct the child in the ways of the Quoran. The children beg in the streets for money to give to the maribou who gives them some food and a place to sleep. It is sad though, because they are given very little food (some rice and sugar) and are beaten if they don’t collect enough money. It is an unfortunate cycle, because many families view their children as a means of support in their old age, and so many families have children even though they aren’t prepared financially and the result is having to give the children away to the maribou as a talibe. We helped put a new floor in a building where the talibes sleep and it was so sad. They sleep on a concrete floor, about 30 kids in one room just sleeping side by side. We also gave the school some money to help pay for some mats for the kids to sleep on. I can only imagine what it is like on cold nights in there. There are also huge bugs crawling around and no running water in the building. We met the maribou of the building who knew some of the volunteers. He seemed ok, but he does carry around a belt-thingy to wack the children with when they get in his way, and he also asked some of the volunteers to marry him, so I wasn’t exactly endeared to the man. Polygamy is common here, and having a white wife is a status symbol that shows you are very important and wealthy. Naturally, the maribous all want to appear as authority figures, so they always hit on the volunteers and often ask to marry the women after a short conversation. Sometimes if I am walking with some of the other female volunteers, people on the street ask me how many of them are my wives. The girls are sick of getting hit on everywhere they go, they usually play along and pretend to be married to me or another volunteer. Then sometimes the person tries to buy them off of you, usually with goats or sheep. It’s times like these that make the girls feel really special.

I was talking with my host brother Moctar about marriage and he said it is possible to have up to 4 wives. That is the maximum according to Muslim law. It seems like two is the average just from what I have seen. As you can imagine, this makes holidays very interesting. Moctar said that during a holiday coming up in December (Tabascay I think is the name, but I know I am spelling it wrong) it is traditional to buy a goat for your wife. However, if you have two wives, you buy them both a goat and must make sure that both are equal in size and health. He said, “If you buy a strong goat for one wife, and a weak goat for the other, you will have all the problems of the world.” He said that being given a weak goat on Tabascay can be grounds for divorce. I can just imagine a Senegalese wife filling out divorce paperwork, and under the reason for the divorce, checking the box labeled “weak goat” right next to “irreconcilable differences” and “adultery”.