Being a ten year old boy in Senegal does not involve daily games on an X-Box or Playstation. It resembles something more like a cross between Huckleberry Finn and The Jungle. Boys in particular, roam free in packs without supervision or rules. Armed with makeshift fishing poles village boys spend countless hours on the river or along one of the lagoons catching small carp or crabs. They swim, run, scream and fight with a Lord of Flies hierarchy, the older boys bossing and often beating the younger boys. They address each other as “Boy,” one of the distinct English additions to the Wolof vocabulary throughout Senegal. Coming home at sunset they are covered in sand and dried salt, grass stains in this case replaced by cuts from fishing hooks and shells.

When not in school or memorizing the Koran with the local marabout, the boys are sent by their fathers out to the fields to cut a rice sack full of grass each to feed the family sheep. Seeing them armed with machetes and sithes can make the hair on the back of your neck stick up for a moment when you witness their raw form of discipline among each other. During the growing season they spend at least an hour or two a day in the field pulling water from the wells to water the onion plots.

City boys, while usually governed by the same freedom, play different games and have it a bit tougher. They jump from the back of one bus to another, catching free rides for one block at a time, roaming boutique front foozeball tables with a gang like mentality. The pressure to do something to make some money for the family here is greater though. Ten year old boys in the city are just as likely to be working as going to school. They drive horse carts, transporting passengers, building materials, produce, and other boys. They sell peanuts and watermelons in the market from a stall, though more often and perhaps by nature, they roam the streets and market with some product to sell. Underwear, phone cards, bottles of water, and radios are common.

At the local Samsung store in Saint Louis, you can always count on seeing a crowd of boys pressed against the glass to watch the big color televisions inside the air-conditioned store. Soccer of course is their favorite thing to watch and certainly their game of choice. Cars fight for right of way among hoards of dusty boys playing soccer with rocks to mark off the sidelines and goal posts.

Young girls meanwhile, are more like indentured servants than their vagabond male counterparts. From morning until night, they are busy cooking, cleaning, and washing. The girls are often more physically built than the boys just because of the daily water pulling, lifting, and activity they grow up with. Village girls usually have a trace of wood smoke smell because of the time spent in the family cook sheds where they cook the rice and fish over wood that they have gathered from the bush themselves. They can clean a fish in record time and clean clothes so well that a washing machine seems a lazy excuse for the old fashioned fist after fist scrub in soapy water.

While the boys play soccer and go fishing, the girls spend hours playing with each other’s hair, braiding one piece of mesh after another to create quite exquisite dos. They play a game like parchisi and sit in the shade, lying on one another on plastic mats. All of them look after babies, often a five year old with an infant wrapped to her back, mothering it with great care.

Seeing all of this with my American eyes I can’t help but think that we are crazy and obsessed with our kids to the opposite extreme, looking out for every step, every breath they take. We are so involved I wonder if we stifle them somehow. The Senegalese model is no better though—I feel terrible seeing the distinct look of an adult in the eyes of so many children I see here. They know what it is to be in dire straights, to work hard, to have no choice. They grow up quickly in spite of their freedom to roam and play.