On a clear and breezy morning in May 2000 I stood on the balcony of a third floor room in the Hotel Continental in Dakar, Senegal. Later in the day I would fly to Paris.

At 6:45 am, the street below had few pedestrians, but a small boy of about ten or eleven particularly attracted my interest. He wore a ragged old T-shirt with a neck so large that all of his right shoulder and much of his arm were exposed. His jeans were adult-sized and secured around his waist by a piece of cloth ingeniously tied between two front belt loops. Under one arm hung a large, red tomato-paste can. This red tomato can identified him as a kind of beggar called an almudo.

The boy paused below me to peer into a large side mirror on a parked van and checked his appearance. Although his shaved head was visibly scaly and sandy, he appeared satisfied and bobbed on down rue Galandiou Diouf along the edge of the curb, by preference it seemed since the sidewalks were not crowded. To prevent parking on the sidewalk, iron rods painted red and white protruded from the pavement every six feet. To negotiate these he was required to take two small steps followed by a large step on his toes to allow the rods to pass between his legs. The large step was terminated by a skip after which the two small steps followed. And thus he danced along rue Galandiou Diouf to a rhythm developed in time with the parking obstructions.

This bare-footed boy, who had slept in the street the night before, who had no idea where his breakfast would be found, if at all, yet had the spirit to dance in the street with an irrepressible gaiety and optimism. On that sunny balcony I formed a resolve to return to West Africa to make a better life for this child and for the other ten thousand children like him who roam the streets of Dakar by day and sleep in them by night.