Today was my last day in Senegal and it was a really full day. I'm getting ready to go to the airport late tonight, my flight is after midnight, so technically Saturday morning. I really hope that I will be able to sleep some on the plane! It will be about 19 hours of travel, which is long but shorter than if I fly from Bamako because I'll go straight across the ocean from Dakar and not through Paris or Casablanca like from Bamako. I am also pretty close to the airport here, and when I am in Mali the trip would start with a 7 hour bus ride just to get to Bamako. Its weird to think that I'll be in the states at this time tomorrow!
Anyway, here are a few pictures from my day:
I went about an hour and a half out of the city and visited "Perspective Senegal", a center for boys that are ex-garibouts. (Garibouts are boys given away to Muslim teachers by their parents when they are little and then they grow up in a horrible system where they are sent out on the street to beg for money and food every day and they are treated as less than human and they must memorize the entire Koran) The center houses and schools and feeds 32 boys from ages 10-22 right now. It is a Christian center but nothing is forced on them; they have been truly liberated. The older boys learn trades such as carpentry (above picture), mechanics, or shoe making. It was really impressive.
I also visited the nearby base. With the base is a small medical clinic. In the above picture you see some white people entering the clinic - there was a youth group from Switzerland spending their spring break on a mission trip to the boys' center that came to see the base and medical clinic with me. There was a class going on at the base when we visited. The clinic is smaller than the one in Dakar, but they said they see 30-60 patients on an average day.
And a final picture: some boys giving a little too much love to this poor donkey.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from my day:
I went about an hour and a half out of the city and visited "Perspective Senegal", a center for boys that are ex-garibouts. (Garibouts are boys given away to Muslim teachers by their parents when they are little and then they grow up in a horrible system where they are sent out on the street to beg for money and food every day and they are treated as less than human and they must memorize the entire Koran) The center houses and schools and feeds 32 boys from ages 10-22 right now. It is a Christian center but nothing is forced on them; they have been truly liberated. The older boys learn trades such as carpentry (above picture), mechanics, or shoe making. It was really impressive.
I also visited the nearby base. With the base is a small medical clinic. In the above picture you see some white people entering the clinic - there was a youth group from Switzerland spending their spring break on a mission trip to the boys' center that came to see the base and medical clinic with me. There was a class going on at the base when we visited. The clinic is smaller than the one in Dakar, but they said they see 30-60 patients on an average day.And a final picture: some boys giving a little too much love to this poor donkey.
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