Pot Rouge (Senegal)

A selection of photographs taken by Sara in 2021 during a voluntary-run project with talibé boys in Senegal. 

The NGO, Maison de la Gare in Saint-Louis, takes in from the streets dozens of talibé a week. The boys are provided with food, clean water, clothes, supplies for washing, treatment for disease or physical injuries and a bed. They stay for 3 nights, at which point they return either to their Quranic teachers, marabouts, in one of the many city Quranic schools (daaras), or, often more favourably, to the streets.

Pot Rouge (Red Pot) refers to empty red tomato concentrate pots re-purposed by the talibé as begging pots. Apart from the shirts on their backs, the pots are their one prized possession, guarded over as if their lives depended on the it. Pedestrians might drop in a handful of uncooked rice, a hunk of bread, or if the boys are lucky, a lump of sugar. Often ignored by their ‘official’ guardians, Quranic teachers, daily survival depends on whether or not any form of nourishment gets dropped into their begging pots.

For more on the talibé, see Creative Voice for Senegal’s Talibé.