Monday, December 12, 2005

Senegal's Richesse: Touba Mosque

Senegal may be lacking in natural resources and you can drop a pebble on the ground and find poverty at your feet or find it tugging on your sleeve by way of a little begger boy. But to find all of Senegal's riches in one place all you need to do is eye the mosque in the city of Touba, about a two hour drive into the interior from Dakar. Touba is the spirtual center for the Mouride brotherhood, one of the largest and fastest growing brotherhoods in Senegal. Its founder, Serigne Touba, believed in hard work and peanuts, which helped fuel the peanut industry here in addition many of the vendors in Dakar and in Europe and the States are Mouride. And that's where the money comes from. Everyone believes in sending money back to their spiritual place and their spiritual guides.

Most everyone in Senegal is Muslim (somewhere between 95 and even up to 99 percent some say) and most every Muslim aligns with one of the five or six brotherhoods. The brotherhoods serve as community that helps people stay focused and gives them a living, real-time version of their religion. Each has variants on how they believe, how they vote, who their spiritual leader is, how they view aspects of life, how many times a day they pray, if it's okay to drink and to smoke weed. It's a powerful force in Senegal and you can see pictures of the marabouts (spiritual leaders) posted everywhere. But especially the Mourides who've managed to incorporate economics into the rigor of their brotherhood and hence increasing their stronghold.


Walking in: The women all had to wear skirts and headscarves.


A view. An angle.


The ceiling in the women's prayer area.


A doorway.


Touba silence. C'est ici.


We had to walk barefoot too. It made me feel closer to it in some ways. Done for religious reasons and so as not to track in dirt, but it's a good way to understand something bottom up.

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