I’m going to be very busy tomorrow Inshallah, so I may not get to write a new post tomorrow.

Part 1

Part 2a

Part 2b

Part 2c

After Brother Muhammad left for America the second time, the first hints of problems began to creep into the program. It wasn’t Brother Muhammad’s fault. He was trying the best he could. But there was just too much for him to deal with.

• He had a family back in America.
• He wasn’t getting enough support from the parents back home (most of them were not paying their tuition for their kids in Senegal).
• There was no true administrator to run things when Brother Muhammad was gone. The Senegalese teachers tried but Serign Fall was too nice and we just overwhelmed Serigne Boge.
• Brother Muhammad was not a business person. He was an educator. He had a grand vision for the program, but he needed a manager to make sure the day to day operations went smoothly.
• And most importantly, we American kids were just too damned ungrateful and misbehaved.

By the end of 1992 and beginning of 1993 the program was starting to run into a few hiccups. Several of the kids returned to America, never to come back. Brother Muhammad was gone most of the time. Both Big Y and Zaid were gone. T returned to America. Eventually, I was the oldest boy on the scene (I was only 17).

Yusuf and I had advanced enough where we could attend one of the Shaikh’s local schools. Several Senegalese attended these schools and except for the first couple of years, everything was taught in Arabic, not French or Wolof.

Had Yusuf and I stayed long enough, we could have become fluent in Arabic. As it was, we were only there for one year. Long enough to understand a lot of Arabic, but not enough to really become fluent.

Yusuf and I were also in an unspoken competition. Believe me, we were best friends, but we competed heavily in the Quran.

Since I had learned to read Arabic in America before coming to Senegal, I had a bit of a head start on the other boys. So, I was always the one who knew the most Quran. But Yusuf was always right behind me. And he kept me studying hard. I studied long into the night to stay ahead of him.

Usually, we memorized about half a page a day. To get an idea of what that is, pick up any Quran printed in Saudi Arabia in Hafs script.

But eventually, the competition heated up and Yusuf forced me to memorize an entire page a day.

And Serigne Fall wouldn’t let us continue unless we could recite everything we knew by heart and in proper Tajweed.

Alhamdulillah, I did learn a lot of Quran during this time.

Unfortunately, no good thing lasts for long. Serigne Fall and Serigne Boge worked for many weeks without getting paid. This was partially because Brother Muhammad was gone for so long. And also because there was no one watching over things in Senegal.

With little or no tuition money coming in from the parents back at home, the only money was what came from the Shaikh. Furthermore, many other people had moved into our compound.

• There were several young men from the Shaikh’s family.
• There were several Egyptian teachers who taught at the Shaikh’s school.
• There was a “dunga daara” or traditional Senegalese Hifz school (very scary places).
• And there was the cook’s family (which was quite large).

Whatever money the Shaikh set aside for the compound (which was made up of about 8 houses) was not enough to go around. And when there was no money, there was no food.

And sometimes we’d run out of money while the Shaikh was traveling through Europe or America. So we’d have to go days on end with no food in this compound and over 50 people living in it.

These were some tough times. All of us American kids had made friends of our own in Senegal. Yusuf and I would either go to where my sisters were staying, or some of our friends houses from school.

We called this “bumming.” We would visit for our friends houses to hang out and wait around just long enough to be invited for lunch or dinner.

And it’s terribly impolite to refuse an invitation in Senegal.

We were becoming more and more wild and independent. Yusuf and I usually tried to do the right thing, but with there being no food much of the time, many of the other boys skipped Serigne Fall’s and Serigne Boge’s classes completely.

And our speech became very x-rated. With no teachers or adults to reprimand us (most of the time) we cursed worse than sailors. Our language would have made most sailors bashful.

Anyway, after several weeks of no money, Serigne Fall stopped coming. Serigne Boge stayed on but he couldn’t control us, and I think despised most of us (not me and Yusuf). He tried to contain us, but we were just too wild.

Fortunately, Brother Muhammad came back after a long time, and some order was restored.

During this time, there was a civil war going on in Liberia. One night, a Liberian refugee showed up at our doorstep looking disheveled and disturbed.

I don’t know how he found his way to Senegal. He had heard there were some Americans living in this area and came to us for help.

He had seen his parents murdered before his eyes. And he looked like he had been through hell. Brother Muhammad gave him some food and we talked to him for a while.

There was another Muslim brother from New Jersey named Mustafa who had come with Brother Muhammad and  staying with us for a few months to study Quran (he was in his late 30′s). He and Brother Muhammad went into a separate room to talk for a while. When they came back, they gave the man a little money and told him he had to go.

All of us boys were shocked at Brother Muhammad’s lack of empathy. We protested his decision. How could he do this? We were Muslim. This man needed help. Couldn’t we at least just let him stay until morning? Wasn’t there more we could do for him?

The last I saw of the man, he was sitting on a rock in the darkness outside the compound as if all hope had been lost.

We argued with Brother Muhammad about kicking the man out, but he and Mustafa explained it to us quite simply. If they let the man stay, they would have to take turns watching him throughout the night.

The man was disturbed. He was traumatized. He had been through a horrible experience. And no one knew him. They wanted to help, but couldn’t endanger our lives for him.

This was a very important lesson for me. I remember pacing the floor turning this over and over in my mind. One side of me, the humanistic side, wanted to help him more. The other side, the practical side, knew that Brother Muhammad and Mustafa were right.

Brother Muhammad left again soon after this. And when he was gone, the compound fell into disarray again. More food shortages. The teachers stayed for some time, but when the money stopped coming in, they eventually left also.

I’ll admit, we became very resourceful during this time. We were pretty much living on our own. Somehow, we managed to survive.

Our numbers were dwindling as more and more kids returned to America. By the end of 1993 there were about 11 of us left.

The buildings in the compound were falling apart by not being kept up (we also broke several windows). The bathrooms were filthy. No one gave a damn that we were American anymore. We didn’t even look American. I had grown out of all of my Western clothes, or had worn them to shreds. I now dressed almost exclusively in Senegalese clothing. We had no secular education, and with our teachers gone for so long, we also went long periods with no Islamic education.

This was the beginning of the end of the program. But so long as Yusuf and I were still there, the program was still in existence.

But even that had to come to an end eventually.

In mid-2003 three new boys joined the program. One was from NYC, but the other two were brothers from the U.S. Virgin Islands. In early 2004, their father came to visit them in Senegal. I’ll call him Brother Abdul.

I guess Brother Abdul thought he could run the program better than Brother Muhammad and decided to take over in his absence. He added a phone line, got Serigne Fall to come back, and sort of whipped us into shape. He also decided to fire Serigne Boge. How the hell he figured he could do that, I don’t know. Seringe Boge worked for the Shaikh and Brother Abdul was just another American with a little bit of money and whole lot of talk.

Brother Abdul started talking about another Muslim school in Trinidad and Tobago that he knew of. He said they had an organized school, that was accredited and graduated several ulema (scholars) a year. Better yet, it also taught secular studies along with Islamic courses.

Eventually, he made up his mind his sons would leave Senegal and go to Trinidad instead. When Brother Abdul returned to America, he must have convinced my mother of the same.

I remember the day I left Senegal, but I don’t remember the day I found out I was leaving. I do know that in July 2004, just a few days after turning 18, I got into a taxi for Dakar. I only had three sets of clothing, all of them made in Senegal and a pair of slippers.

I stayed with a family that Brother Abdul knew in Dakar for a few days. Then I boarded an Air Afrique plane for New York City.

I remember watching Tombstone on the in-flight movie starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer.

And I remember finally coming home to a different America than the one I’d left 3 years earlier.

When I left George Bush was President. Now Bill Clinton was.

The Knicks were in the finals. They eventually lost.

O.J. Simpson was all over the news. I didn’t pay any attention at first. It seemed like he was responsible for killing a couple of people.

No one was listening to New York rap anymore. Everything was West Cost this and West Coast that. Some L.A. rappers named Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre and Easy E were really popular.

America had been beat in Somalia.

The cars looked different. The taxi cabs and police cars now looked like spaceships.

Some guy named Guiliani was the mayor of NYC.

Siraaj Wahhaj was a lot more popular than he was when I left.

Homosexuals were a lot more open and accepted than when I left.

The Mets sucked.

The biggest movies of that summer were Forrest Gump, The Lion King, and True Lies.

Dammit, I was back in America and I was sooooooo happy!

But my happiness was short lived. I stayed in America for that summer and then was off to the school in Trinidad. I was hoping my mother had forgotten about it, but she didn’t.

So, in September 1994 I became the newest American student at Darul Uloom, Trinidad and Tobago.

Before I start talking about my experience in Trinidad, let me summarize my three years in Senegal.

When I left America, I was a pretentious young 15 year old with little knowledge of Islam. I was often scared to walk to school. And I thought education and money was my ticket to a better life. I was an American who just happened to be Muslim.

But when I came back, I had grown into something different. I no longer feared the creation. I truly only feared Allah. Now I was a Muslim who happened to be American.

I had lived for the better part of three years on my own in a foreign country as a minor. And, by the Mercy of Allah, I had survived.

When I left America, I knew exactly four small chapters of Quran (Fatiha, Ikhlaas, Inshirah, and Nasr). When I came back I knew several juz (sections) of the Quran.

I spoke two languages, and could almost speak a third.

I could walk through the toughest parts of New York and feared nothing else except He who created me.

Before leaving, I would jump the subway turnstiles without a second thought. Now, I knew it was a sin to steal and would rather walk than incur Allah’s wrath.

Once, after coming back to America, I was in the subway and was fumbling through my wallet trying to find money for a token. Somewhere behind me, some supposedly tough kid yelled out: “Damn that’s a fat wallet!”

Before Senegal, I would have been worried and tried to ignore him and hope he forgot about me.

Instead, I turned around and looked him straight in the eye and stared just long enough for him to get the message.

I bought my token and got on the subway. I think he got the message.

Up next: Trinidad!