The History Of Female Circumcision (FGM)

I have written a post recently for my Mali-blog "Nara-La Sahelienne" that I would like to share today. I usually keep the blogs that I write apart because their content and location is very different. Linking a lot of articles between them might confuse the reader. 

But I think that I have mentioned before, that I was a project coordinator of a complex development project in the north of the West African country Mali for six years, before coming to South Africa. 

Mali, one of the most peaceful countries has found a sad place lately in the international news. The north of Mali is presently being occupied by ex-Gaddfi mercenaries and Taliban fighters.

The term for female circumcision generally used in the Western World is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). More than 90 % of the women in Mali are still being circumcised or excised today. 

If you would like to read about it just click the link. I have written this post for my friend and old collegue Cheick Fadel who still holds the position in Nara.

In Africa, When An Old Man Dies, It's A Library Burning

 In Africa, when an old man dies, it's a library burning - spoken by Amadou Hampâté Bâ 1960 at UNESCO 

"I graduated from the great university of the Spoken Word taught in the shade of baobab trees."

"The people of Black race, as they are not peoples with a tradition of written literature, have developed the art of speech in a most special manner. While it is not written, their literature is not less beautiful. How many poems, epics, historic and chilvalrous narratives, didatic tales, myths and legends of egregious literary style have so been transmitted through centuries, carried by the prodigious memory of the men with an oral tradition's, passionately in love with beautiful language and almost all poets." Amadou Hampâté Bâ 1985

"If you know that you do not know, then you will know."

All the proverbs are from Amadou Hampâté Bâ and the pictures are from Dr.Juergen Schlichting, my uncle and mentor, a street photographer and writer who was born in 1936. His extraordinary work covers the 1950's to the 1980's. The photos in this post were taken by him during a trip through East Africa in 1959. His images complement perfectly the quotes of Amadou Hampâté Bâ. The life of this great African writer fascinates me over and over again. For the ones who would like to read more about him I have compiled a small summary below.


Amadou Hampâté Bâ was born to an aristocratic Fula family in Bandiagara, the largest city in Dogon territory and the capital of the precolonial Masina Empire (Mali). After his father's death, he was adopted by his mother's second husband, Tidjani Amadou Ali Thiam of the Toucouleur ethnic group. He first attended the Qur'anic school run by Tierno Bokar a dignitary of the Tijaniyyah brotherhood, then transferred to a French school at Bandiagara, then to one at Djenne. In 1915, he ran away from school and rejoined his mother at Kati, where he resumed his studies.
In 1921, he turned down entry into the école normale in Goree. As a punishment, the governor appointed him to Quagadougou with the role he later described as that of "an essentially precarious and revocable temporary writer". From 1922 to 1932, he filled several posts in the colonial administration in Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso and from 1932 to 1942 in Bamako. In 1933, he took a six month leave to visit Tierno Bokar, his spiritual leader.
In 1942, he was appointed to the Institut Francais d"Afrique Noire (IFAN, French Institute of Black Africa) in Dakar thanks to the benevolence of Theodore Monod, its director. At IFAN, he made ethnological surveys and collected traditions. For 15 years he devoted himself to research, which would later lead to the publication of his work L'Empire peul de Macina (The Fula Empire of Macina). In 1951, he obtained a UNESCO grant, allowing him to travel to Paris and meet with intellectuals from Africanist circles.
With Mali's independence in 1960, Bâ founded the Institute of Human Sciences in Bamako, and represented his country at the UNESCO general conferences. In 1962, he was elected to UNESCO's executive council, and in 1966 he helped establish a unified system for the transcription of African languages.
His term in the executive council ended in 1970, and he devoted the remaining years of his life to research and writing. In 1971, he moved to the Marcory suburb of Abidjan, and worked on classifying the archives of West African oral tradition that he had accumulated throughout his lifetime, as well as writing his memoirs (Amkoullel l'enfant peul and Oui mon commandant!, both published posthumously).Wikipedia

Mali - In The Village

From time to time I like to infiltrate this blog with some photos that I have taken during my seven year stay in Mali in West-Africa. Simply because they are so beautiful.  All the pictures, me and my brother have taken during that time, are on film and they have that depth and deepness of colors you don't get so easily with a digital camera.

It is now after a couple of years that I find the time to process the material that me and my brother have accumulated during this amazing and enriching time. While I have worked as a project coordinator for a holistic village development programm in the North of Mali that reached out to over 60 villages, my brother did research on labor migration in West-Africa for two years and wrote his final thesis on this topic. There are some beautiful stories to tell.

I Gave Him A Great Name

This was the moment when I saw my horse for the first time. It belonged to the wealthy trader in the picture, whose passion was to breed horses in Nara, Mali. He brought it to me knowing of my love for horses. It was born and bred in Nara. The horses of the Sahel have a great deal Arab blood in their veins but they are a desert breed of their own that has developed over centuries in the Sahel region. They are short, thin, strong willed and very endurant. But they are not nervous like race horses. Of course I bought it.

I called the stallion " Mandela" because he was so proud and strong. At the time I did not know that I would live in South-Africa later. The name came to me in the flash of a second. And Mandela became known in the whole village of Nara and in the "cercle". A cercle in West-Africa corresponds to a municipality in South-Africa.

And he has given me lots of trouble too. On more than one occasion I had to make my way back by foot through the bush while he was already home in the yard feeding grass, as if nothing has happened, or running through the roads of the village with an empty saddle on his back - embarrasing me by doing so! But he was too beautiful not to forgive him.

There is great contrast between my life then and now. The country of South-Africa at the tip of this beautiful African continent is a different planet compared to the West-African region. Both areas are beautiful. When going through the material, the work reports, the letters written home and the many photos recently, I have decided to tell the tales of this period on a blog of their own. It is worth it.

Akono

AKONO - from Ghana, worked at the Bar Kouame in Nara, North of Mali.
Was often home-sick to the bone.
But never made enough money to pay for the trip to go back.

Every night, for seven years, he kept a cold beer for me in the back of his parafin fridge!

AND EVERY DAY I WILL GIVE YOU A NEW VEIL

This is a day for story telling.

It is grey, rainy and cold outside like it often is in autumn at the South-African coast. And this makes me feel lonely in a good way. When I am in this mood, when I am loneliness then I can write. So if you want and if you are loneliness too today - follow me to a country where it is always hot and where I can find a lot of memories for you.

I lived in Mali once, a dry, hot and dusty country in the Sahel situated in the Western part of Africa whose heart beats in the Sahara. I lived, loved and worked there for a while. 

My home was in Nara, a town in the north of Mali bordering an even drier land - the old and beautiful Mauritania.

The people of Nara told me that the name means fire. Some insisted however that Nara originated from Noara, the name of a moor woman, strong in mind and very beautiful with light skin so it was told, who was the first person to have the courage to settle down in that harsh region called the Valley of the Snake.

Monday was a very important day in Nara because it was market day and the locals would come from as far as Nouakchott on camels, donkeys, in Land-rovers and by foot to the market to trade their goods on one of the most colorful markets in the Sahel region. 

  (unfortunately not my photo but Lehnert & Landrock)
                    
One day on a late afternoon when all activities were dying down in the last light of the day I walked to the market, feeling the hot sand come through my sandals making it uncomfortable. The Soninke, Moor and Tamacheq families were already returning to their villages. The women were sitting on donkeys or on camels covered in long black blue veils holding the smaller children and treasures bought on the market while the men and the bigger children were walking beside them leading goats or having chicken dangling from their hands. 

I visited a couple of stalls and then strolled over to the part where the shops were. I went into a corner store. A corner store was something prestigious because it had several doors and the air could float through making it less hot.
In the middle of that shop was a mountain of carpets and on that mountain lay Mohammed whose face I had only seen once or twice without his turban covering his face. He was sucking on his pipe and threw a glance in my direction when I walked through the door.
Covering all the walls from bottom to top were veils, veils with colors and patterns of paradise. The colors seemed to be in love with each other and wanting to hold on to each other forever.They had a slight but distinct smell and I could not help touching them, letting my hand run over them while walking along the walls.  I had been there before..... I came again and again to look and touch the veils.
When the wind blew into the shop the veils moved and they started whispering.

" Salam Maleikum " said Mohammed

" Waleikum Salam " responded I.

" Would you like me to make tea" he asked

Of course " I said.

So he started the old ritual of making tea.
I felt exhausted, punished by the heat, out of place and when I looked through the oval of the open door it seemed like the sky was ablaze with white light and the light was pushing through the door hurting my eyes. I felt like fainting in my striped camping chair that he had put up in one corner for me.
I often felt like this at the end of he day in the first weeks.
The strong tea helped and he offered me cookies like always that were as hard as river stones but once I had chewed them up they left a bitter strangely biting and sensual ginger taste in my mouth. His wife made them.

We sat a long time not talking too much, chewing cookies, drinking tea, smoking and only the occasional word fell in between.
" Do you like to work ? " he asked
" Yes, I just do no like getting up early in the morning "
" So you're lazy ".. came his voice

" In the name of god, it is not written and it is not fore-seen that you should become mine. " he said.
I turned my head and looked straight at him. So far I had not thought of that possibility. But once the door has been opened the air flows in.
" Do you think really that god is writing and planning everything for us? "
He ignored my question. And looked away.

" Look at you " he replied instead facing the ceiling, " your hair is white but your eyes are dark. This is confusing. And your skin has the color of a young white goat's belly. But all this goes well together. God is great and an artist."

I paused my tea glass on my knee, flies were circling around it and I starred thunderstruck in utmost delight, disbelief, joy, excitement and confusion at the veils. They threw their colors and batik patterns back at me.

A YOUNG WHITE GOAT'S BELLY. My skin was like a young white goats belly. I liked that. I liked that very much and I had to sigh. Poetry and great infatuation seemed to be swirling like djinnis in the air of this shop. Oh yes. I was a master in the art of making unusual compliments myself but this was a height to which I had not yet risen.
The veils starred back at me knowingly and understanding. My mind now tried to visualize frantically how a young white goat's belly looked like. The words were honey, Turkish delight, milk chocolate with almonds.... very sweet and sticky, gluing to the mind. I was in a mad mood out of a sudden.

" A young white goat's belly, you say, could one say then that a young white goats belly ressembles a shade of pink, may be? ", I whispered carefully in his direction not really having regained my inner calm.
" It is like a bowl with milk and a little blood in it ", he answered sucking his pipe blowing the smoke into the room.
I had my answer. I still liked it.
But I truly wondered when one would be given milk with a little bit of blood to drink.

" But.........." I started with a strangely weak voice.
The veils shook their heads and whispered DON'T SPEAK. DON'T SPOIL IT.
LET HIM TALK they whispered. I obeyed at once because they must know how to behave with men in turbans on carpet mountains in 49 degrees in the shade. They have experience spanning hundreds of years

" I have seen only women with blue eyes that have your kind of hair, but yours are dark and this is confusing. Very confusing in fact. You belong to the type of women that have been created to make man carry a heavy burden". he said in a meditative mood.
" Oooh ", I said.  And that was all.
It is embarrassing for me to be out of words. I consider it a shame.

" But if god ever would have wanted that you became my wife, I would give you a new veil every day. And you could be lazy too."

A veil is the utmost and ultimate instrument of female seduction. But it needs a little practice of application because accidents can happen as well, all sorts of accidents especially if the veils are 6 meters long and have to be wrapped ELEGANTLY around your body.

While walking home through the night under a sky that was now ablaze with millions of stars, holding two brand new strangely smelling veils tight, that he had given me, I submitted completely and voluntarily to one of those moments of delicious weakness in life where I had no problem convincing myself that the luxury of a lazy life and 365 veils were all I needed. Had I ever had another desire than this. NO!

The way I look at young white goats has been changed for ever and I am so immensely grateful for that.
And sometimes I still think of Mohammed.