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.

Nara – La Saheliènne

I invite you to visit a new site that I have just created about Mali in West Africa. Just click on the following link and it will lead you to my wordpress blog.

 

 Nara – La Saheliènne

http://chocolatnegro.wordpress.com/

 

http://chocolatnegro.wordpress.com/

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.