Harsh Times Test Young Beggars

Clothed in grimy beggars’ rags, the holy man’s disciples run through the dusty slums of this sunbaked West African city. At each house, they sing the haunting strains of an ancient song.

“In the same way that Allah takes care of you, please give us something to eat,” the boys intone in high, plaintive voices, empty bowls held out in front of them.

Doors slam and angry voices bark out rejections. But there is also kindness, and after several hours of begging, the 11 boys, ages 5 to 15, huddle behind a mud wall to share meager bowls of stew and bundles of clothing donated by working-class families who themselves are struggling through hard times.

In a tradition as old as the spired mosques that punctuate the arid Sahel region on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, these boys and thousands of others are sent by their parents to Niamey to learn the Koran, Islam’s holy book.

Begging door to door for each meal has long been a socially accepted part of the equation because neither their parents nor the Muslim clerics to whom the boys are entrusted can afford to feed them.

Children Sleep in Dirt Clearing

Omar Saley, the mild-voiced cleric who is mentor to the 11 boys in Niamey’s poor quarter of Boukaki, is barely able to provide food for his own wife and baby in a spare mud-walled room. His only furniture is a sleeping mat and a small table.

His child disciples have even less. They sleep outside in a dirt clearing on the edge of a pit filled with rotting garbage.

A broad-leafed tree provides shade but little else while the boys pore over wooden tablets smudged with Arabic verses in India ink. Passages of the Koran are recited aloud in a cacophony of young voices.

“Evil temptations are everywhere in the city,” says Saley. “That is why it is so important to teach children the Koran at a young age.”

But amid growing urban decay and poverty in cities like Niamey, Niger’s capital, popular opinion is turning against teachers and followers.

Many youngsters have abandoned their religious calling. They end up joining a hard-edged new street culture that includes scavengers, thieves, drug addicts and prostitutes on the margins of a conservative Muslim society.

A few clerics have also gone astray, indenturing their young charges into virtual slavery and forcing them to steal or beg for profit.

Everywhere in Niamey’s exhaust-choked streets, throngs of young boys wearing tattered oversized T-shirts that cover their legs like gowns tug on foreigners for coins or pick pockets. At the city’s bustling central market, one of Africa’s largest, youths with glazed eyes skulk in dark corners sniffing gasoline and glue.

“Ten years ago, we did not have this problem,” taxi driver Hamani Haitadou says. “Our young people were respectful of the traditions of Islam. And anyone could safely walk the streets at night.”

Like many Niamey residents, Haitadou is openly hostile toward street children who travel in packs for companionship and protection. Innocent and guilty alike are widely suspected of contributing to the city’s rising tide of murders and armed robberies.

Even some social workers and charity groups treat the beggars as outcasts unfit for assistance.

SOS International, an Austrian-based charity that is one of the few organizations to provide a home in Niamey for orphaned and abandoned children, refuses to accept beggars and street children for fear they will spread trouble among the other children.

“These street children smoke and do other terrible things, so you must understand that it is not possible for us to take them,” says Fatima Trapsida, coordinator of the SOS home. “This is a problem that our entire society must face together.”

A Dream of Becoming a Teacher

For penniless teachers and pupils who continue the time-honored tradition of memorizing the Koran’s lessons of moral purity and discipline, times have never been so difficult.

Ibrahim Ali, 15, dreams of becoming a teacher like Saley despite the fact that he never has enough to eat and people sometimes beat him and spit on him while he is begging.

“I have no power, so I must just take this punishment,” Ibrahim says. “I leave it in God’s hands.”

Every mealtime, the boys are transformed from pupils into street kids again. They put aside their lessons to beg for food and coins, which they turn over to Saley for times of particular hardship.

That struggle is infused into Saley’s religious lessons. Going without good food and a roof over their heads, and forgoing the decadent modern pleasures like action movies, liquor, cigarettes and drugs now available in Niamey, makes the boys morally pure, he says.

“Suffering is a gift from Allah,” Saley says. “The way to become strong is through pain.”