Finding the Childhood He Never Had

Mamadou Gueye’s moving account of finding a child and returning him to his family

There are nights that stick in your memory like a slow burn. Nights when silence weighs more heavily than words, when each step echoes like a cry for help that no one wants to hear. That night, on the fishing wharf in Saint Louis, a child stood alone between two worlds - the one he had fled and the one he hoped to return to. He was only nine years old.

He no longer cried. Not because he wasn't afraid, but because a child's heart can only hold a sea of tears - and his had dried up. He wasn't running away to beg less … he was running away to live a little more. He had just escaped from his daara after months of beatings, hunger, loneliness and humiliation. That evening, all he wanted was to go home to Diaobé. To see his mother again. To feel his grandfather's arms. To become a child again.

When Mamadou Gueye and the others found him, he didn't say much. He was used to not being listened to. He simply whispered: “I want to go home”.

“Home” - such a simple word, so heavy. And then something clicked. Something you don't often see in the stories of talibé children: the possibility of a return.

Welcomed at Maison de la Gare, fed, cared for and reassured, he saw a new dawn. Very quickly, a search was launched. Because it wasn't enough to get him off the streets. We had to give him back what had been stolen from him: his childhood, his dignity, his family.

And one morning, after a thirteen-hour journey, the vehicle arrived in Diaobé, in the south-east of Senegal. The sun was just rising, caressing the rusty tin roofs and fields still damp with dew. The child said nothing, but his eyes burned with feverish anticipation. At the entrance to the village, some children saw him coming. They shouted his name. Like an incantation. Like a miracle.

Within minutes, the whole neighborhood was there. The women dropped their basins. The men, speechless, crowded around him. They couldn't believe their eyes. The child they thought lost, swallowed up by the streets of Saint Louis, had returned.

A family council was held immediately. The grandfather, a respected figure, decided in a firm voice: “Never again to the daara”. His voice trembled, not with doubt, but with emotion. The mother, with tears in her eyes, nodded silently in agreement. The older brother, his fists clenched, was already asking what he could do to help him stay. Never lose him again.

And that's where the real story begins. Not the rescue story, but the rebuilding story.

Maison de la Gare has promised support. Follow-up. Support with housing, schooling and a new life. The child has been enrolled in school. He is also learning the Koran, but in a healthy, respectful environment. He plays with others. He's laughing again. And sometimes, when he does something stupid - because he does, like all children - it's Mamadou Gueye they call. Because the bond remains. Because you don't abandon the people you've helped to get back on their feet.

This return is not just the story of a child who has been found. It's an act of resistance. A living response to a dehumanising system. It is a refusal to believe that a child must suffer in order to learn. It's about a family rebuilding itself, a village remembering, and an organisation that chooses, every day, to act rather than look the other way.

There's something deeply moving about seeing a child return home. Not by a miracle, but because adults have done their bit. Because people decided that his life mattered. Because they listened.

And every time I think back to that night at the fishing pier, to that frail figure in the moonlight, I tell myself that this return should be the norm, not the exception. That every child who runs away from a daara should be able to find his mother, his laughter, his home.

Because when it comes down to it, there is no greater act of justice than bringing a child back home. Where they don't have to choose between light and darkness. Where they can finally simply sleep in peace.


 

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