Storytell with me
Over several months and centred around street libraries operating in four districts on the outskirts of Dakar (Sam Sam 2 and 3, Guinauw-Rail North and Xelcom), helpers and volunteer leaders worked with the children to create a story: “Mbale Picci”.
The story is based on the children’s own lives and was brought to life after a weekend’s introduction to storytelling given by the Senegalese storyteller Mr Babacar Mbaye Ndakk.
The story is part of a much wider project on the rights of the child, coordinated by the street library organisers. Over 8 months of work, the children and their parents were able to articulate their vision of the rights of the child in voice and with pictures.
The children created their own illustrations for the story in their home districts.
Funding from the Spanish Embassy to help “Senegal’s vulnerable children and young people to valorise their non-material heritage” also meant a book could be created.
To give a fitting end to the project, it became clear that the children should perform the story and exhibit their work. It was a great challenge to coordinate the efforts of thirty children from the four districts where ATD Quart Monde carries out its work. Today, the song “wichi wacha” and the name of “Mbale Picci” resound in the districts, even far away from the centres of the activities, as a quiet note of hope, pride and joy.
The children’s exhibition, their work around this story and their rights, and their theatrical adaptation were presented at the Blaise Senghor Cultural Centre last December 23rd to an audience of almost 300 people, including the Minister for the Family, other members of its services, and the representatives of a good twenty associations.
Once the curtain raised, the children, their parents and organisers spoke about their lives and struggles.
The parents explained: “because of the floods our children are unwell. We have to leave from where we are living because the land doesn’t belong to us. We are now living on a reprieve. Not having a house is one of the hardest things for the family.”
Speaking on behalf of the project’s leaders, one of them explained: “There is sometimes anger in these districts, life gets critically difficult. Poverty leads to the children witnessing things that they shouldn’t even have to know about. These are not easy places to raise children. Despite all of that, parents push their children to go and work, or to study, or they send them to better-off relatives so they can seek a different future.”
The children meanwhile highlight the importance of having friends. “With friends, life is easier. With friends we learn to help each other out, to share. When there’s an argument, it’s friends who calm things down and separate the people who are fighting. And when you’re ill, it’s of course good to go to the hospital, but what’s better is to have friends who come and visit you in the hospital and to know that you are not alone.”
They added: “It’s important to us to stay with our parents, even if it’s difficult for them, even if some days there’s nothing to eat. Because it’s not that our parents don’t love us, but that they don’t have anything to bring back that day. Is eating a right? We children ask to stay with our parents, and to be able to live in a house where no one will tell you that you have to leave.”
With the support of the dedicated organisers who remained at their sides, the children went on to express through their work to everyone who is prepared to listen that, when lives and an entire group of people are disregarded, the respect of the rights of the child is impossible.
In conclusion to the day, a call was made for these children’s communities to be supported so that they can meet their responsibilities towards children: to their children.
