Seven Thousand

Roughly seven thousand young boys roam the streets of Dakar, Senegal and many other West African cities as talibés. Many families who can’t afford to educate their sons properly in Islam entrust their young boys to holy men known as maribouts. The children, beginning at age five or six, go to live with their new leaders where they are to learn the Qu’ran in exchange for labor. However, many of these maribout take advantage of the boys, forcing them to do hard labor, forcing them to beg for money daily, doling out harsh beatings to those who don’t bring in enough money and neglecting their Islamic studies.

Seven Thousand: A Sonnet for Talibés

Parents wish a better life for their sons

Knowledge of the Qu’ran is the mission

To the maribout go the little ones

To begging, beating, and malnutrition

Education is a lie, truth’s blood-stained

Suffering is the life of the betrayed

Human trafficking, the name of the chains

This is not the life for which parents prayed

Seven thousand boys in Dakar alone

Blasphemous perversion leaves these victims

Seven thousand victims so far from home

Their voices cry out, but will you listen?

Seven thousand souls have been lead astray

For freedom I pray, little talibés