The bus arrives around noon. I misunderstand the instructions from my couch host and start walking toward the city center instead of his home, making so that he has to come and chase me down in a taxi. I hear my name from a passing car and turn to see a smiling face peeking out, a bundle of dreadlocks secured on top of the head and eyes hid behind sunglasses.

Manza has hosted plenty of couch surfers before me and has a routine down for where to bring tourists in his hometown, the proud Saint Louis. Which is perfect for me, who gets to play tourist for a few days. After a short back-and-forth we decide to lean on my shitty French and his patience for communication, with his English as backup.

We head for the old town straight away. The taxi leaves us by the famous bridge and we cross it on foot. The big iron beams and rivets intersect, lift up into arches over us, metal billowing in a straight row over the water.
“It’s only during this season that the water is yellow,” Manza says. He explains how the rainy season has an effect on the current and the amount of salt, how the water from the river Senegal mixes with the water from the sea, causing different colors.

The old town is quiet and empty. We walk along the streets with colorful houses, balconies and flower pots, chic cafés and small shops. Manza stops by a house and beckons me to him. When I approach I see that squeezed between the houses is a long, narrow alleyway. The walls rise high on either side, and far off I can glimpse the water.
“During the colonial times the black people were not allowed to walk further than this point on this street. They were not allowed to go near the administrative buildings unless they worked there,” Manza explains. “So they used this alleyway to pass to the next street if they had to cross the bridge.”
“Can we walk here?” I ask. Manza nods. I walk first into the alleyway. The walls grow up high and tight around my body. The sounds, already few, become muffled. A small strip of sky remains above. We pass a small, closed wooden door, and from the other side I hear voices. Then silence again. The space between the walls is just wide enough for my body. I imagine it is two hundred years ago. I imagine it is night; the dark shadows left behind by the moonlight; having to hide my skin between these walls.

We cross another bridge and enter the fisherman’s quarters. Long-thin fishing boats are lined tightly against one another along the shore. They are all painted in bright colors, with patterns and important names, religious blessings or encouragements; “Alhamdullillah”, “Dieu est Grand”, “Djallo”. Some float slowly down the river to dock for the night, boys standing barefoot on the edges and steering using long sticks, like the gondoliers in Venice. Here the city is more worn down, the market louder, dirtier, more vibrant. It smells like fish. People are leaning over the bridge to look over the water, taxi drivers shout down customers and cars pass close to the sidewalk. Children run barefoot by the waterline, women empty the dirty dish water, people sell snacks along the road. The setting sun paints it all golden yellow and we lean against the bridge railing and look over the water with the others.

Tree boys spot Manza, shout and run toward us while we are on our way back. They are teenagers, not older than sixteen. They touch hands, joke and chat and Manza ruffles them over the short hair and punches them playfully. I get the impression they look up to him; like a father, or a big brother;
“They are street kids,” Manza tells me once they have parted. “I have known some of them since they were seven or so.”

Manza works for the Red Cross. He tells me he will work the next morning.
“Do you want to come along?” he asks.
“Yes, sure!” I say, happy to be included. Besides doing something with street kids, I have no idea of what his job is even though he explains it to me; I haven’t learned the verb “soigner” yet. When the translation application helpfully gives “bag of cure”, which is what he usually carries around, I am still slow to catch on to what he actually does and I go to bed guessing what the next day might bring.

In the morning, after we’ve had our breakfast, Manza brings out a black, robust backpack. He opens the zipper and I understand everything; inside, neatly sorted in the different pockets, are packages with bandages, disposable gloves, bottles of disinfectant, medical scissors and pliers; all sorts of first aid equipment. It all rattles into place: the “bag of cure” is a bag of medical utensils and Manza is a nurse, giving care to the street kids!

Our first stop is only a short walk from Manza’s house. I can hear the noise from the yard before we step through the narrow gate: a mass of children’s voices chanting, a few stray chats and shouts. It is a Quranic school. The yard is cramped, the houses low and the concrete blocks naked and withering. A big and ruffled mat is rolled out on the gravel, an imam is sitting in the shadow and thirty-or-so children are seated around him, reading a Quranic verse in deep concentration and more or less in unison. They are all boys, the ages spanning between eight and twelve. A teenage girl welcomes us with a smile and asks some of the children to fetch us a mat. They roll it out in the next room while the girl calls the kids for Manza to see. We settle on the ground and Manza opens the backpack, picks out cotton wads, a bottle of disinfectant and sterile gloves. He hands me a pair.
“Wait, why?” I ask. I don’t understand why I would need the gloves just to watch him work. We’re not exactly in an environment where I could be expected to keep my hands sterile, here, cramped on the floor in a room that lacks a door, with kids running around everywhere.
“You’re helping,” he says and waves the gloves for me to take. I hesitate before I put them on. What can he mean? I know nothing about nursing.

The boys drop in over the threshold, some shy, others chatty. They don’t stare at me with the wide eyes that kids usually do here, and I figure that maybe Manza has brought other white guests and volunteer workers before. The first boy comes to sit on the mat and shows Manza his leg. He has a wound, big as half of my index finger, covered with rough scab and yellow pus on the edges. Manza prepares a cotton swab with disinfectant, picks up a pair of tweezers and gets to work cleaning the wound and pulling away the scab. The boy winces and draws his breath, but stays still and quiet. The other kids stand around and watch. Manza is calm, unfazed by the boy’s reactions. He neither soothes nor scolds him, sometimes saying a few words in Wolof. When the wound is clean he bandages the leg and gives the boy instructions to keep it clean before sending him back to the recital.

“Did you see?” he asks me as another boy sits down and shows his wound. “I’m showing you another one, and then you’ll do the next.” He goes through the same procedure of disinfecting, removing the scab and bandaging. This boy doesn’t cry or complain either. He is chatty and smiles between the small gasps and winces from pain as Manza dabs the wound with disinfectant and removes the dirty scab.

The next boy gets ordered to sit down in front of me and Manza hands me a pair of tweezers. The boy shows me a wound on his leg. My hands feel weak when I open the bottle of disinfectant. I grip the tweezers. Manza watches me from the side as I disinfect the wound, corrects me when I am about to throw the scab on the ground instead of collecting it in the sterile swab and talks to the boy in Wolof. The boy is shy, staying quiet as I pull away the scab and expose raw, blood-red tissue. He winces and his eyes water, but he stays still. It takes a moment but finally the wound is cleaned, bandaged and the boy is set to go.

While we pack away the equipment I find myself quiet and with watering eyes too, hands still weak. I can not believe the trust that kid put into me, that he let me treat his wound, not complaining despite the pain my clumsy hands must have caused him. In fact I am touched by all the kids, sitting through the pain without complaining and putting their trust so completely in Manza.
“You did well,” Manza praises me when we are out on the street again. He is still as calm and unfazed as ever, but he has probably noticed my silence.
“I can not believe how brave these kids are! How they trust you! How they trust me!” I can not keep calm once we are out on the street. “This is crazy! I have never done anything like that before, in my life!”
“I’ve got photos,” Manza smiles.

On our way to the next place Manza tells me the meaning behind the word “Talibé”. It means someone who studies the Quran, but it has also come to equal the boys who are begging for money in the cities of Senegal. It happens that poorer families or single mothers send their children away to Quranic schools if they don’t have the means to support them. They do so, believing that the children will be cared for, given food and shelter meanwhile also learning the Quran. Quranic schools do not give academic credit in Senegal, but are a compliment to standard eduaction and held in good esteem. For families who can not afford to pay the school fees, sending the children to Quranic school is better than nothing.

And so the children, sometimes as young as five years, are sent from small villages to bigger towns or even cities like St Louis to become Talibés. But when the children arrive, alone and sometimes without knowing anyone, it turns out that the new place is just another place for them to feel the lack. They have to support themselves by begging for money on the streets, sleep in crowded, dirty and insecure facilities or even outside, vulnerable to all sorts of dangers and abuse. They do learn to read the Arabic alphabet and verses of the Quran, but for the most part they are left to fend for themselves until they are old enough to work and support their parents.

We walk down narrow streets. The sun is at midday. Manza greets the neighbors, looks into a yard where a small boy is busy scooping water out from the bedroom, a few steps lower than the street. The boy smiles; this is not the first time.
“The flooding is getting more and more common with the climate change,” Manza explains to me. “Many people here live in lower houses, so the water comes inside.”

Saint Louis is also known for being one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to the effects of climate change; the sea level rises rapidly and land erosion eats away at the shore. Many homes are already flooding regularly and more flooding is only to be expected.

Our next stop is a small classroom underneath an apartment building, just a door in from the street. The Arabic alphabet is written on the blackboard and a few desks and chairs are scattered around. The walls are gray and the only light comes in from the open door. Behind the classroom is a small room where the boys sleep on mats. It smells like urine. The boys loiter in the second room when we arrive but come out with big smiles to greet Manza. There are around ten of them. Manza challenges them playfully and one after the other they take the stage and recite the letters on the blackboard, smiling and showing off. The other boys are quick to shout corrections at any mistakes and hesitations, and after every presentation the room erupts into applause.

Only one of the boys needs to have a wound cleaned here, and I get the honor. I get to sit on a wooden stool on the street, the boy on a plastic water can. I feel a little more confident with the tweezers now, and the boy is just as patient and brave as the others.
“We have one last place to visit,” Manza tells me as we leave. “It’s going to be a bit different.”

We come up to a painted wall and a gate. The wall is white with a blue globe painted in light blue, a yellow sun rising behind it and two silhouettes of children in the foreground, one pink and one blue. The words

FUNDACIÓN
Un Colegio Para Todos

are painted in black.
“Can you take a photo of me here?” Manza asks suddenly.
“Sure,” I say, “how do you want it?” He poses by the wall and I snap a few pictures.
“This is our project, a collaboration with a Spanish organization,” he says. He calls someone through the gate and a small boy appears in the door. He looks up at us, holding up his hand.
“Take a picture of him, too,” Manza says. “It’s good to show what we are doing on the web and the fund applications.” I lean in to take the photo and startle when I see the boy’s hand. On the back run several open wounds, with skin almost completely missing from his fingers. The wounds thin out toward the wrist, becoming only bumps. The skin that remains is dry and wrinkled and the boy is quiet, his eyes on the ground. He can’t be older than ten.

We enter the gate into a walled in compound. A small space by the entrance is separated with sheet metal where a woman is watching a pot boiling on the fire. The rest of the compound is crammed with tents running along the wall. The tents are improvised out of fabric and plastic, packed tightly together. In the middle is an open space. A big tree casts shadow over the yard and clotheslines criss-cross over the space, a few pants and t-shirts moving in the breeze. Teenage boys are loitering around in the shade of the tree, on benches and the ground. All of them get up, shout and smile, greeting Manza as soon as they spot him. They gather around him, talk and laugh, while he gives affectionate jabs and ruffles heads. I stay back a little and smile; Manza seems to be greeted like this by the Talibé boys wherever he goes.

“I have known many of these boys since they were that size,” Manza says and points to the small boy who has followed us, keeping a watchful eye. The boys get benches for us and while setting up his equipment, Manza translates some of the latest news: someone has found a job and someone is going back to his home village soon. I get the only plastic chair and Manza takes the small bench. The boys gather closely around us to look on.

The little boy sits down on the very end of the bench. Manza takes his hand and shows me.
“This is scabies,” he explains. “It is common sometimes if they are living tightly together like this. If they are sleeping close to someone who has it, or maybe if they touch a dog. It is common that it starts from the hands and feet, sometimes the genitals.”
“I once had a boy who had it all over the body,” Manza goes on. “Nobody wanted to touch him. I bathed him with the medicine, we had to do it several times, and in the end he got well. He came to spend the holidays with me.”

Manza douses a cotton swab with milky yellow liquid. He presses the swab against a wound and the boy tenses from the pain, face distorting. Manza continues, but the pain becomes too much and the boy pulls his hand back. Big tears roll down his cheeks and he wails. He cradles the hand and sobs, edging backwards on the bench. Manza holds out his hand but the boy doesn’t want to; he is scared and it hurts. Manza waits, hand stretched out. He talks calmly to the boy, explains why he has to put the liquid into the wounds. The crowd of boys around us is silent, their eyes earnest, not moving from Manza and the boy. Someone reaches out and puts a soft hand on the boy’s head, touches the small shoulder blades shaking with sobs.

Ten good minutes pass while the boy cries. Everyone waits. Manza with the same calm voice, the boys with the worried eyes. Nobody leaves. Nobody hurries the boy. Nobody tells him to “be a man”.

Finally the wails subside. The boy reaches out his hand through the sobs. Manza takes it. With the same care, though a little slower, he continues to swab the wounds with the liquid. The boy cries, dries his tears with the other hand, but does not move. Only at one point, when Manza treats one of the wounds between his fingers, does he pull back his hand again. And everyone waits again until he is ready to continue.

Finally Manza is finished and the boy is free to go. With feeble steps he leaves toward the kitchen-corner.
“I have to come back and do this again in two days,” Manza explains to me while he takes off his gloves. The other boys liven up while we clean away the swabs, and when we’re finished they are all smiling and relaxed again, the worry lifted. The little boy peeks at us as we leave the compound and close the door, leaving the tents, the clotheslines and the boiling pot.

…

“Can you do this?” Manza asks me while pouring ataya from high into a small glass. We are at the beach, sitting in the light sand. Around us are others, couples and families, who have come out to enjoy the breeze, play football, make ataya over small fires and look over the water, just like us.
“Sure!” I say, “Why not?” I laugh; I don’t actually know if I can do it; I have only tried it once or so. Manza hands me the small kettle and takes my phone to photograph me and the sweet, streaming tea. It lands in the glass, sure, as well as generously outside it.
“What is the hardest thing for you here in Senegal?” Manza asks me. I don’t have to think about it too long.
“It annoys me that people are shouting “toubab” as soon as they see me,” I say. To which Manza laughs.
“You don’t like it?”
“No!” I reply.
“But you are a toubab,” he says. “From now on, I will call you “toubab!”” He laughs and I sigh. I wish it didn’t annoy me, that I could laugh at it as easily.

We walk home in the night. The streets of the old town are still calm, with beautiful colored lights shining out from the cafées and restaurants, music spilling out into the street.
“Can we walk through the alleyway?” I ask and we take the detour and turn into the quiet gap between the houses. The moonlight doesn’t reach between the high walls and I have to run my hand along the wall in order to walk straight. The street ahead is a small, dark blue square in all the black and I aim for it. Time and skin color doesn’t change the experience of a body; I still feel like a small, vulnerable mouse between the narrow walls, despite being free and several hundred years late.

We mingle with the families on the cramped sidewalk on the bridge. The iron beams are lit with yellow, the water black below. On the other side of the river people are hanging out in the well-lit park, chatting and snacking, the bus station bustles across the street.

…

We sit up late on the rooftop of Manza’s house, talking about nothing in particular. His brother joins us. We watch as the neighbor’s girl takes down the laundry in the house across the street. I lean my head back and look at the stars.

Manza’s family is used to foreigners visiting and they have welcomed me warmly. The house is under construction; the first floor is finished, tiled and furnished, while the rooms on the second floor still lack paint, tiles and doors. Manza has given me his room with a beautiful double bed, white tiling and blue LED-lights running along the ceiling. He himself sleeps on a mattress in a room upstairs. In the room across from him his father is keeping two sheep. They bleat in the mornings and poke their muzzles out to look whenever someone passes in the hall.

Manza follows me to the bus stop early the next morning. He finds me a bus when the one I was planning to take gets full. It is just about to leave and I barely have time to hug and thank properly before I am ushered up the stairs and into a seat, the bus already turning out.

The trip back to Dakar feels long. I look at the road through a gap in the curtain and think about the children chanting in the small yard of the Quranic school, the little boy with the wounded hand and the group of silent teenagers, their worried eyes, holding space for his pain and fear. The boys who have grown up on the streets, yet who give so much softness and care. In the end Saint Louis can be as famous for its architecture as it wants. What has touched me is the life inside one of its cracks; the softness from people showing up, growing, insisting on pushing with love against the walls of the narrow alleyways that life has given them to walk.

…

A few days later I receive a message from Manza with attached images. I download them. It’s a photo of the boy’s hand, still wounded but looking better now. That’s right; Manza was going back to treat him after two days. The next photo is of the boy, getting his hand dabbed with the medicine while looking into the camera and smiling. In the other hand he holds a small, white rosary. His smile is weak, but his eyes are steady and he looks relaxed.

—

Manza is a real person and so are the kids and teenagers that he tirelessely works with in Saint Louis. If you want to know more about his work or make a charitable contribution, you can find his project Kër Jamm Rek on Facebook or contact +221 7790 790 93 through Whatsapp.

…

(This story told in pictures part one, two, three, four and five.)