Talibe Trash Picker

Everywhere we go in the West African Muslim world we see destitute children begging for money on the street. Many of these kids are what are called 'Talibe'. They will use the word while begging to alert the potential giver they are students of the mosque. From what we are told, parents will give one of their boys to the mosque in exchange for favor or blessing, and the mosque then sends them out on the street to beg. They are required to beg a certain amount per day to be fed and minimally cared for. They really live a miserable existence,  and are always under- nurished and dirty. Today while walking around Niamey we paused under some trees to rest and drink some water. To our surprise from out of the bushes come three Talibe who proceed to just stare at us. They weren't begging, just staring. Two had small kitchen pots for collecting money, and one had an Aldi™ bag of garbage. Yes, a real Aldi™ bag.  One of the kids with a metal pot was wearing it on his head like a hat. The other had his tied to his neck like a Martha Stewart™ version old school Flav-o-flav™ inspired neck piece. After some concentrated staring, maybe half an hour, the Talibe with the Aldi™ bag began unpacking some of his garbage. The first item surprised me a little, a broken motorcycle helmet. It was busted right in half. Do you know how hard those things are? I've been in a couple motorcycle accidents and never broke one...especially not in half. Wow. The best I could do was a few scratches. Next there were some glass and plastic bottles, scraps of tarps, papers, a broken flip flop, and finally two small unripe mangoes.   The garbage kid begins to eat a mango when he notices the kid with the pot on his head now staring at him. So he reaches down and rolls his other unripe mango to the kid with the pot on his head and they finish them together. Flav, who had lost interest in staring and wandered off, called over to the two still with us and off they went together to beg and stare elsewhere.

A couple thoughts crossed my mind. One had to do with the exploitation of children.   The other was that those Aldi™ bags really do come in handy.