However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy

Author:Aimee Molloy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

14

Ngir Sunuy Doom yu Jigéen (For Our Daughters)

In 1995, after the participatory research was complete and Molly was in the midst of writing the new module on women’s health, she was approached by three Tostan staff members who had been part of the research team. They wanted to talk to her about an idea they’d been debating: including a discussion about the tradition of female genital cutting in the new health module.

Molly was taken aback. “Of course I knew by this time just how sensitive and secretive this topic was,” Molly says. “My first response to the idea was ‘Are you crazy? No way.’” Since first learning about the custom of cutting girls’ genitals to prepare them for marriage, she had gone on to have a greater understanding not just of the tradition but also of the complicated politics that surrounded any efforts to stem the practice, especially if those efforts were attempted by a Western organization. Some Africans condemned the mere idea that Westerners should become involved in what they saw as a very African problem. Knowing that Tostan’s success rested entirely on local trust and a deep overall respect for traditional culture, Molly was extremely hesitant.

She’d already run into enough trouble, given the fact that she was the director of an American organization based in Senegal. As Samir Sobhy, the UNICEF representative in Senegal at the time, recalls, “Molly had made some enemies simply because she is not African. Members of other NGOs were envious of her success and the support she got from our UNICEF office and the fact that a foreigner was getting funding they believed should have been going to local NGOs.”

But the three Tostan women, all of whom themselves had been cut, were adamant. During their research, they’d been approached several times, often in quiet corners after the large group discussions had ended, by women ready to share their misgivings about the tradition. While these women believed it to be required under Koranic law and were reluctant to say too much about it, they were curious, they admitted, if some of the problems girls faced were perhaps due to the procedure and not solely to evil spirits. They talked about seeing their daughters hemorrhage afterward, how some young girls had even died. They had themselves experienced their own difficulties during sexual relations with their husbands and certainly during childbirth. They wanted to understand more.

“I just don’t think this is an issue that Tostan should take on,” Molly responded. “People will not be comfortable with the idea of an American working on this.”

But the Tostan women wouldn’t let the topic die. “Tostan is hundreds of Africans, Molly. This is not about you, the only American in the organization,” one said weeks into their debate. “We are African women who need to discuss this issue. We have suffered and some of our daughters have died. The question of FGC is a human rights issue, and we believe it’s time to discuss this openly. You have a choice.

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