chapter: Senegal - part 4 (@ dhara)

So now it's been 2 weeks-ish since the Senegal mission trip. And the section section to be covered begins with its problems. The day to be discussed is Wednesday. By this time, the team is a pro at the Seree greetings from two previous clinics in Seree villages. So Wednesday's scheduled activity was to stay in Theis where we were sleeping and do clinic for street kids essentially. This is where the two problems come in. I didn't take any pictures of the place or the kids out of a fear/respect for the men running it. What I'm trying to say is that I didn't want to be seen as inappropriate and ruin the Christian witness to these Muslim religious leaders who we were serving and the witness from many others. The second issue is I don't know how to spell the place where we were serving ... which doesn't work so well for a written blog. So for a likely incorrect spelling I'll just go with "dhara". There are multiple dhara in each major city and even the smaller towns. In its pure form, dhara is school - an Arabic teaching Koran school for small kids. Parents send their boys (I think its only boys, but I very well could be wrong) so that they can grow up as good religious men. If you are wealthy you can afford to send your son to a decent dhara. If poor, well ... not so good.

The team that we joined from Pennsylvania had done clinic in two different dharas before. The first one, we were told, was on the "not good" side. The boys stay there, beg on the streets for money (to teach humility), and study the Koran in Arabic. I really don't know much about the whole process, especially as an outsider looking in on one particular instance.

The dhara we were in for clinic was not beyond imagination bad. The boys looked in pretty good condition. We were all kind of on edge and prayed up, not knowing what to expect. It was a large concrete structure with a second floor half the footprint of the ground floor. There was no solid floors, just dirt. We gave each child a vitamin, a dose of de-worming meds (as in intestinal parasite stuff ... it happens when you run around bare-foot), and tanga (means candy) - just like the lollipop after the dentist. After all the nursing station stuff, they went into the medical consultation area for specific stuff. I don't anything that happened in their; I was giving every kid one chewable children's vitamin. After we saw all the kids, some other kids not belonging to the dhara came in.

That's what we did. We played with with them; encouraged them to dance with us; mostly they just laughed at us; we tried to comfort them; we tried to give them motherly touches; show them love and care; be Christ for them. And that's what the day was all about. And it was good.