Time to Get to Work - Can All of this Really be Happening?

So many importamt things happened Monday, my mind is having trouble sorting them out after the fact. It is always like this the morning after a Ronde de Nuit.

As Dad and I stepped through the familiar gates of Maison de la Gare it felt like coming home. Familiar faces appeared to welcome us. Kalidou. Elhaje. Soon followed by Issa, Awa, Adama, Abdou, so many more.  Small changes surrounded us too, like always. The bank of five toilets and showers for the talibés was gone. A pile of sand and shovels in its place. They had backed up completely, the rags worn by the kids sometimes get stuffed into the drains, so the boys can come out, clean and naked, pointing out that since they have no clothes, they need new ones. The faucets, used by many dozens of boys each day, were loose, and some of the doors, slammed beyond their capacity to endure, had been falling off. life happens. Some boys now have a bath in the laundry and drinking water area.wers

Unfortunately, the cost of the repairs will be $1800 that Maison de la Gare does not have.  Since the showers have been missing the number of talibes with more serious skin disorders has been increasing in the infirmary. There are many generous donors out there who will want to help the talibes. We'll find it. So, knowing this, we authorized the work to continue and the repairs to be made. 

Kalidou, Elhage and Soulaymane were diligently at work in the Atellier, filling clothing orders and working on new products as part of their tailoring apprenticeship. The number of boys enrolled in this apprenticeship program has diminished, unfortunately. Kalidou says many more want to participate, as they see the possibilities for independance thanks to a reliable trade in the future. But, they still need to live now, and many of them still need to submit begging quotas to the marabouts who still control their lives. So, it seems Maison de la Gare must find a way to help the apprenticeship program become a commercial enterprise, or another source of funding must be found, generating enough revenue to allow the boys time to learn before their productivity gets to a self sustaining point - which could take years. 

I met with Kalidou, who assists Baka (his mentor) with the tailoring program, to discuss the possibility of the boys making grocery and shopping bags that we could take back to Canada and sell to raise funds for the program. I am hoping that we could pay for the bags from Maison de la Gare and them make a profit selling them to raise money to support another Senegalese family who needs our help and whom some of us in Canada have been trying to help since last year. I sketched out three patterns of three different sizes, and Kalidou is going to work on it over the next few days. I look forward to seeing his results.

I also met with Sensei Ignety Ba, who runs the dojo where about 20 talibes are registered as members, and he supervises the karate program at Maison de la Gare, thanks to donors, mainly from my own karate family back in Ottawa at Douvris Martial Arts.  We disscussed the details for the karate tournament I have planned for Maison de la Gare. It will be Friday, all day! The mats have been ordered, five referees have been called, I brought the prizes from Ottawa and they are now here, ready to award to the winners. The morning will be devoted to a tournament with two divisions for the younger kids, featuring Keons and Kata. Then, after a break for lunch and the mosque, the tournament will resume in the afternoon featuring Kumite and Kata for the older boys. Then, a special black belt ceremony to award Boiro, the lead Sempai at Maison de la Gare, his long awaited, and well earned black belt. Sensei at last.

I met with my Godson, Mohammed, the son of a Maison de la Gare teacher. It was a lovely reunion. Dad and I later had dinner at the restaurent where the father of my other Godson, Djiby, works. Of course, we were welcomed as family, as always. 

Then, after midnight, when Dad was asleep, exhausted from spending the day pouring over the accounts with our Maison de la Gare partners, I went out to meet the Ronde de Nuit Team. I met Abou, who took me to pick up two volunteers, Mari from Norway, and Graciella from California, We made our way to the Gare Routiere by taxi where we met the rest of the Ronde de Nuit Team, including Idy and Mamadou Gaye. Then, dividing into two groups, armed with flashlights (and my black belt) we ventured into the back alleys and dark places in search of runaway talibe boys. 

After about 15 minutes of searching under cars, in buses, behind boxes and in dark corners, our flashlights shone on a lumpy small bundle in a back seat of a broken down bus with no glass in its windows. Idy woke the little boy, speaking to him in Wolof. He lifted the boy out through the bus window and we walked to a bench where we sat and talked with the boy. His name is Khaly, 12 years old, and he has been on the run for 2 months.  Then, the other team joined us, accompanied by two more little boys, Ousmane, age 13, and Djiby, age 7, we think. Idy spoke with them all for a while, jotting notes down in the dark, getting a piece of each of their stories.  Mamadou Gaye later told me that it is important to ask questions immediatley, and to pay close attention to how they answer. If they come out with their name, daara, home village right away, it is often the truth. If they take time to consider, it can often be a story, whereby the truth needs to be ferrited out later. 

Now it was about 1:00am, a  taxi was hailed  and I bundled the three tired little boys into the back seat of the car and then climbed in after them. Idy jumped in the front. The rest of the team follwed in another car. The boys had not heard of Maison de la Gare. and had no idea who we were, despite our explanation that we were there to help. Khaly fell asleep beside me, exhausted, Djiby sat slumped morosely, as if accepting his terrible fate, and Ousemane sat rigid by the door, seeming ready to bolt.We soon arrived back at Maison de la Gare and brought the boys to the Dortoir d'Urgence. Each was registered with the guard, they were brought some food, and then shown

 to the beds. They all seemed to relax a bit, anxiety receding. Ousemane scrambled up the ladder to a top bunk and hunkered under his blanket. When I climbed up to tuck him in, he rewarded me with the faintest smile. Khaly and Djiby took bottom bunks and were soon asleep, despite the anxiety and fear they surely must have felt about the strange surroundings and the uncertainty that faced them in the morning. After a final pat on each boy's sleeping back, we left them. I returned to the hotel to be greeted by the night guard. He wished me a good sleep. But, this night sleep would alude me.