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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However Long The Night

I just finished reading a marvelous non-fiction book, beautifully written by Aimee Molloy.  However Long the Night is the story of Molly Melching and the extraordinary work she and her non-profit educational outreach organization, Tostan, have been doing, mostly in Senegal in West Africa.

Molly Melching in Senegal

Tostan is a word in Wolof, the most widely spoken of several languages particular to Senegal. It means 'breakthrough'.  That is exactly what Molly Melching and Tostan have facilitated in villages throughout Senegal, and in several other African nations. Tostan's work centers on using education and awareness of human rights as a platform for empowering the people to make thoughtful and informed decisions that might improve their lives.  Tostan's outreach is community based and most often begins with the women. Traditionally in virtually all African cultures, women have a subservient role to men.  They are often treated as chattel, sold into marriage at a young age, considered unworthy of education, good mostly for birthing and raising children.   One very unsettling aspect of life for females throughout Africa is something called, 'the tradition'. It involves the ceremonial cutting of a girl's genitals,  specifically the clitoris and the labia around the vagina opening, at a very young age.  For perhaps a thousand years - no one know exactly how long -  this practice, called female genital cutting, or FGC, has been a rite of passage for a girl,  thought to be crucial to a girl child's worthiness for marriage and motherhood.  Those who endure FGC are subjected to extraordinary suffering. Beyond the terrible pain that comes with having these most sensitive tissues mutilated, almost always without anesthetic, FGC is often done with an unsterile blade that has been used for the same purpose multiple times.  The health effects of FGC, including severe hemorrhaging and infection, are often permanently debilitating, even deadly. 

World Health Organization studies indicate that 140 million women around the world have been subjected to FGC,  101 million of those in Africa. 

Aimee Molly's book,  However Long the Night is a powerful narrative of a young woman, a Caucasian American, who arrived in West Africa in 1974, pursuing a master's degree in French language, hoping for a future as a linguist/translator. Almost forty years later,  Molly Melching has created of one of the most effective educational outreach non-profits operating on the African continent. 

As of April, 2013,  in Senegal, 5,423 communities have abandoned the practice of female genital cutting.  Much of the credit for this goes to Tostan.

 

 

 

 

Tostan employs a patient, culturally respectful style in its community based education, conducted by Senegalese facilitators, in the local language. Reading, writing, basic math, farming technique, water management,  hygiene, and personal health are at the core of the Tostan learning. Perhaps the most important lesson imparted to the women who participate is the knowledge that they, as human beings and citizens, have certain 'inalienable rights'.  When they learn this, illiterate women from the smallest backwater villages begin to rethink their lives.  This process has led to the renunciation of FGC in thousands of communities in Senegal,  the widespread repudiation of early childhood marriage, and a new acceptance of women in community leadership roles.

I love However Long the Night.  My admiration for Molly Melching and her team is boundless.   How can one not be inspired by a person, whose tireless commitment and perseverance has transformed an entire nation in dramatic fashion in one generation? 

I'll save the rest of what I have to say on this subject for the next blog entry,  which will tell my own personal revelation on this subject and how my recent connection with Tostan, and one of its leaders, Gannon Gillespie, has been a great benefit to my own writing.

Here is a link to the Tostan website    www.tostan.org

A Hero's Journey - Molly Melching and Tostan

Tostan is a non-profit organization based in West Africa. It was founded by a remarkable woman named Molly Melching.  I first learned about Molly and Tostan from reading Half the Sky, a wonderful book about the  empowerment  of women in the world's poorest places. I wrote a blog entry about that book on 10/3/2012.

Born and raised in Illinois, Molly Melching's interest in French eventually took her as an exchange student to Senegal in West Africa. That was in 1974. She never left. After a stint as a Peace Corps volunteer, during which she learned to speak 'Wolof' (the principle language in Senegal), Molly remained in that country, continuing her community development and education efforts. That led to the launch of Tostan, which means 'breakthrough' in Wolof.

From that beginning, Molly and her team evolved a strategy for community development that put great emphasis on the empowerment of women.

In most places in Africa, there is a strong cultural tradition of male dominance, with women subjugated and treated like chattel.  In this tradition, girl children are considered unworthy of being educated, and are destined at a young age to be traded into a marriage relationship by her family.  With no rights of her own, a woman in these traditional African cultures is subjected to every kind of indignity and brutalization.

A particularly cruel aspect of reality for these African women is a tradition known as Female Genital Cutting (FGC).  In this tradition, girl children, most before the age of ten, are subjected to the cutting away of the external parts of their genitals, including the clitoris and labial tissue.  This is done without anesthetic.  Extremely painful and medically unnecessary, FGC is thought to dampen a girl's libido, a condition required culturally to be worthy of marriage.  In Africa,  nearly one hundred million women have been mutilated by FGC.  

Molly Melching and her colleagues at Tostan have developed a particularly effective model for evolving local communities away from FGC and early childhood marriage.  It works because it focuses on community development while encouraging respect for women and the acceptance of new cultural norms, including the ending of FGC and early childhood marriage.  Tostan has successfully implemented their community model in ten African nations, including Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, Gambia, Burkina Faso, and Sudan.  

On the occasion of International Human Rights Day on December 15, 2012,   Tostan reported that 115 of their participating communities in Guinea-Bissau collectively renounced FGC and forced childhood marriage. In fact, they went beyond that and embraced every human's right to recognition, respect, and  access to education and health care. Tostan was a powerful facilitator behind  this remarkable community achievement. 

Molly Melching has dedicated her life to the people, particularly the women and girls, of Africa. She and her colleagues at Tostan have made an enormous difference.  I admire them and urge every caring person to stand with them as they work diligently to bring dignity to all the women and girls of Africa.

Here is a link to the Tostan website...  www.tostan.org