Africa, Women, and FGC - My Evolution of Understanding

A few years ago,  I began working on a novel titled, Virtue.  At the center of the story is a hardcore conservative media magnate. Imagine a younger version of Rupert Murdoch.  Anyway, this guy experiences a life threatening health scare that causes him to do much soul searching.  During his recovery, he meets a young woman who has focused her life on elevating women in the world's poorest places. The guy is oil, the woman is water. They don't mix well, but the passion is definitely there.

The media magnate's name is Greg.  The young woman he becomes enamored with, Daria, directs her outreach efforts in two places; Haiti and Ethiopia.  Her primary focus is on developing and implementing a  program called Bright Eve, built on interactive learning modules in the languages spoken by the local people.   One of the places Daria choses to test Bright Eve is a slum settlement called Mabwe  on the edge of Ethiopia's capital city, Addis Ababa.

 When I was developing  Daria's connection with this Ethiopian slum,  I was doing research on life in these poorest of poor places in Africa.  I discovered a cultural practice that girls anywhere from age three to ten have endured for perhaps a thousand years or more.  In this practice that I first came to know as female genital mutilation (FGM),  a girl child is subjected to the ritualistic removal of her clitoris and the labia surrounding her vaginal opening.  It is thought necessary to assure the purity of the girl for marriage as she grows older.  Needless to say, it is a shocking practice, painful to the extreme, and often accompanied by a whole range of serious health problems that can last a lifetime. In these cultures, girl children are treated as property, deemed unworthy of education, good only for house keeping and child bearing.

I have long believed that solving the colossal civilization scale problems that we face, like climate change and mindless population growth, first requires a leveling of the playing field, with equality and dignity for all becoming the norm. A crucial part of this is the empowerment of women.

In Virtue, Daria's focus is on elevating women in the world's poorest places.   When I learned about FGM, I sensed that it was something Daria would want to confront as well. Long story short, I was able to integrate an FGM subplot into Virtue.  After finishing the 100,000 word manuscript for Virtue,  I sought out editorial feedback, and over a number of revisions, I was able to make the story work nicely.

While working on revisions for Virtue,  I read a book titled, Half the Sky by Nicolas Kristoff and Sheryl Wu Dunn.  That book was a compendium of true stories of heroic women around the world pushing back against oppression, exploitation, and gender violence.  One of the stories in Half the Sky was about a women named Molly Melching,  who had created a non-profit organization called Tostan in Senegal in West Africa.  Tostan is a word that means breakthrough in  wolof, the most widely spoken native language in Senegal.  It's an apt description of Molly Melching's work.  Other efforts had been made to encourage the end of FGM.  Tostan evolved a model that delivered unprecedented success in educating and encouraging the repudiation of the culturally entrenched practice of FGM.

So, when I read the story of Tostan in Half the Sky, I knew what the next step for me needed to be.  I had to reach out to Tostan. I wanted my work to serve their noble efforts to affect change on the FGM issue in Africa, where it is actually happening everyday to young girls across the continent. 

Near the end of 2012, I made contact with Gannon Gillespie, Director of Tostan's office in Washington, D.C.  Gannon was pleased that I had written a work of fiction that included a plot element on female genital cutting.   He  agreed to read the Virtue manuscript, and he also arranged for Julia Lalla-Maharajh, founder of The Orchid Project, another global non-profit focused on the issue of genital cutting in Africa to read it

The feedback they gave me reflected disappointment because the way I presented female genital cutting in Virtue was not accurate.  Because it was not the main plotline of the story,  there's no denying, I didn't spend as much time trying to understand FGM as I should have.  Fortunately, Julia and Gannon  supplied notes, and I was able to make needed adjustments in the story  I didn't want Daria to be a hero like Molly Melching. At least not on the FGM issue. I wanted Daria to be deeply unsettled by FGM on an emotional level. I wanted her to respond emotionally to it initially, but pull back in time to a more measured and pragmatic posture. Most important, I wanted the depiction of FGM to be a useful reflection of the reality.

The first thing I learned from Gannon and Julia is that the term female genital mutilation has largely been replaced by female genital cutting (FGC), as a way of properly addressing the cultural sensitivity of the subject.

In April of 2013, a new book was published about Molly Melching and Tostan, the title of which is However Long the Night.  I wrote about this book in the blog entry that immediately precedes this one.

For me, this new book, authored by Aimee Molloy,  was a revelation  It helped me to understand and appreciate the way Tostan and also the Orchid Project are encouraging the end of FGC.  Working at the village level, Tostan facilitators, all of whom are local people themselves,  teach women that they have basic human rights; that they are entitled to dignity and proper treatment under the law. They teach lessons on reproduction, and the health effects of  FGC.  It's the patient, non-judgmental encouragement of community buy in, along with women, for the first time, understanding that they have rights, that makes Tostan's model for positive change work so well.

Most of the people in Senegal are Muslim. Tostan recruited local Imams to assure their followers there is nothing in the Koran that calls for women to endure genital cutting. Tostan and the Orchid Project encourage communities to come together as a whole to  abandon the practice of cutting, because it is the right thing to do for the health and welfare of their girl children. As of April, 2013 in Senegal alone,  5,423 communities have pledged an end to FGC.  This is a remarkable achievement, but there is still much work to be done.

The informal association I now have with Tostan and The Orchid Project assures that the subplot involving FGC in my novel Virtue will present the issue in the best way possible to serve the interests of their work.   I have also made a commitment to them that a substantial share of whatever I earn from the book and movie rights to Virtue will go to Tostan and The Orchid Project.  For me personally, I can't 'imagine anything more gratifying than to support these selflessly dedicated people with their efforts to empower women in Africa.

Here is a link to Tostan  http://www.tostan.org/

Here is a link to the Orchid Project  http://orchidproject.org/


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