Please sir, I want some more.

The places and people I see everyday in Dakar are really not all that different than big cities in the US. Granted, there is a lot more concrete and trash in the roads, but the major features of the city are generally the same. Lots of buses. Lots of people in nice clothing. The one thing that I have been noticing lately is the ubiquity of beggars. Panhandlers exist in Minnesota just the same, but the number of children and women with infants out on the roads is unbelievable. I don't know how I feel about it yet, but it is certainly not a sight I am used to. The practice is a little different here, and most people occasionally (or more often than that) throw coinage at the young boys with old tomato cans. Most of the boys out on the streets are what is known as talibes, students of Koranic teachers who are sent out on the streets to beg and give the profits to their teachers. I think that the practice is justified as being good for their moral character and education, but I will have to double check that. Oftentimes parents will send their sons away for an education at Koranic schools if they don't have the money to send them elsewhere or to feed them at home, meaning that the boys are usually solely in the hands of their marabouts (holy men who are often Koranic teachers). Recently a Senegalese court outlawed the practice of forcing talibes to beg, punishing a number of marabouts for sending their students to the streets The New York Times had a really good article about it a few days ago. It strikes me as a very exploitative practice and I myself have never given money to the talibes. I guess it is regarded differently here. I think a lot of people were pretty shocked by the court's decision to regulate this common practice. I know that even in Senegal opinions of the talibes are fairly divided. On my first day here, my mom took extra time to explain to me that I shouldn't give them money. Maybe some bread or food, but never money. She seems to fall in the camp of people who disagree with the value of begging. Others seem to think it is more acceptable. I don't think I have been here long enough to say with any certainty what I think, but the visions of talibes and women wandering up and down the roads asking for money stand out. I will have to give it some more thought before I decide how I feel about it.