My name is Maimouna, and I am the daughter of a great Marabout.
My father is a great Marabout - a Koranic teacher who is entrusted with many children, the so-called 'Talibés', who all live together in the 'Daara' (a place where they study and live, far from their parents) for an exclusively religious education.
My father is very well known and respected, not only in our village but throughout the area, and many families have entrusted their children to him in his Daara in Dakar.
I wasborn and raised in the Daara withall these children and spent my days learning the Quran with them. When they would go out into the streets looking for some alms or food offered by passers-by or neighbours to enable us to survive, I would help my mother and my father's second wife to prepare food for everyone.
But for some years now, things have changed. There is an association, Janghi, which convinced my father that it was important to go to school: to know how to read and write in French and to learn many other things. And so, thanks to Janghi, along with other Talibés children I was able to go to school and I became passionate about all the new things I was discovering.
My life changed, and I began to dream...
I soon became one of the best in the class and easily made it to the end of primary school. We were a group of friends who studied and repeated the lessons together and I often encouraged them and explained what they had not understood.
We knew that at the end of the year there would be a very difficult exam, and if we passed it we would be able to continue at school and who knows, maybe even get to university. I was beginning to dream... Maybe I could have become a teacher too, or maybe a midwife or a doctor like the one who treated and saved my little brother.
These were dreams that in our village it is very rare for a girl to have because there are no schools of this level and no parents allow their daughter to go far away from home to attend middle school or high school.
My teacher reassured me and told me not to worry about the exam because I would pass it successfully, he was sure.
But one day the director of my school summoned me to tell me with a stern look that he could not register me for the exam.
He could not register me for the state exam because despite having asked him several times, my father never provided him with my birth certificate.
My father was not there at the time, he had gone to the village with Sheikh and Sylvestre, two managers of the Janghi association. But even if he had been there, it was too late, the registrations were done. I was so sad. What is this piece of paper that is so important? Why don't I have it? How can the lack of a piece of paper prevent me from taking this exam and following my dream?
When my dad came back he found me in tears. When I explained what had happened, he became sad too. He tells me that the people in charge of Janghi had spoken to him several times about the importance of this document and had asked him to get the birth certificate of each child they had entrusted to him. Then, since no one had done so, they had organised a trip with him to their villages where they would raise awareness and through his presence they would surely be heard.
In fact, it was a great success and not only the parents but also the mayor of the municipality were mobilised and within a short period of time the first 12 Talibés children were able to obtain their birth certificates. He never imagined that in the meantime his own daughter was suffering the consequences of not having one.
Janghi's volunteers still lent us a hand, giving me an identity.
But they were very surprised that I didn't have a birth certificate. They told them that since I was born in Dakar, they hadn't really imagined it: usually those who don't have it are because they were born in a village where nobody knows the importance of certain documents and where it is much more complicated to obtain them because you have to travel to the city to make the necessary declarations.
My father was so impressed by this problem that he decided to work hard, with Janghi's help, to get birth certificates for all the children in Daara as soonas possible.
I was very sad not to have been able to take the exam with my friends but I am happy because thanks to this story all my friends from Daara will have their certificate which opens the door to many other things; it lets the state know that you exist and that you have rights.
