BANDIAGARA, MALI — It started with soap and some rough
bolts of cotton. Back in 1999, Aïguèrè Tembely and a few other women in this
town on Mali's famed Bandiagara escarpment started a simple aid project. They
had the rare advantage of education, in a country where 85 per cent of women
cannot read or write, and they wanted to do something for their sisters in the
villages of this culturally rich but economically bleak terrain where Mali's
Dogon people live.
So they started teaching women to make soap and dye
cotton and a few other skills meant to earn them a bit of extra money. Which
was all well and good, except pretty quickly, the village women had a question.
"They asked us, 'Why is it that when you women come
here on your scooter, you are never pregnant, and you never have a baby on your
back?' " recalled Ms. Tembely, who is known universally here as Fifi.
"And we said, because of family planning, of course. And the women said,
'What's that?' And we said, 'Ah non!' They knew nothing about it. And we knew
we would have to do something."
They were fast getting the sense that the ability to plan
pregnancies would do more for village women than any soap-making project. But
Ms. Tembely's expertise is in soil erosion and none of the other women were
qualified to teach family planning either.
Aïguèrè Tembely, middle, standing with villagers in
Kokolo, Mali, leads a group that helps educate women. Eighty-five per cent of
women in the country cannot read or write. (Stephanie
Nolen/The Globe and Mail)
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So they marched down to the local clinic and explained
their predicament to the doctor. Soon they were versed in the intricacies of
everything from diaphragm use to assessing a woman's fitness to take the
contraceptive pill. But they couldn't just start doling out diaphragms, mais non, Ms. Tembely said. Men rule Dogon society, and
decisions on pregnancy are not made by women.
"So we went first to the men, and we said, this is
family planning. Why don't you use it? The men said it was forbidden in
religion - no, we said, it's godly for people to be healthy and in order for
women to be healthy, they must space their children."
With a small, shrewd smile, she added, "And then we
said, 'Anyway, it will save you money - your children will be healthier and
more of them will live.' And so the men agreed, and then the women said they
would do it. That was the beginning."
It was the beginning of an extraordinary development
initiative that has served to quietly, unobtrusively and radically reshape the
lives of women in Dogon society. Aid workers with the Canadian diplomatic
mission here, which funds the project, speak of Madame Fifi and her group as
one of the most effective they have seen anywhere.
In the past nine years, contraception use in the area has
risen from zero to nearly 70 per cent of women. Illiteracy is dropping quickly.
And they have virtually eliminated female genital cutting in the 97 villages
where they work in a country where the practice is otherwise nearly universal.
The group is called YAGTU - an acronym for the Dogon
words for woman promotion association. Its driving force is Ms. Tembely, 38, a
large woman with an even larger voice. But it's her skill for quiet diplomacy
that has made YAGTU so effective.
"It always helped that we're from here, we're all
from here. If I don't have a close relative in a village, someone here does.
You will see all these NGOs that come from Bamako because they have government
financing to do a project. But they can't work here. They don't speak the
language."
She doesn't mean that just literally - although Mali has
a great many languages - but more in the sense that outsiders are deaf to the
incredibly complex mix of animist, Christian and Muslim traditions in Dogon
life. "When we go to the villages, we change our clothes, so we are
dressed like them, and we behave just like them."
And when they wanted to make changes, they started with
men, winning over the most respected elders first.
From family planning, YAGTU moved into malnutrition.
"In every village we would see these children with huge bellies and tiny
bums," Ms. Tembely said with a sigh. They began to produce an enriched
baby cereal, made with millet, peanuts, sugar and salt, which they distributed
to pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and small children. They taught women
to grow sorghum, a higher nutrient grain.
But soon the women began asking why YAGTU staff, when
they did have babies, never died in childbirth, never developed fistula as so
many village women did. The YAGTU staff explained bluntly that it was the
practice of clitoral excision, and the resulting scarification, that caused
obstructed labour. An estimated 94 per cent of Malian women undergo excision of
the clitoris and some part of the labia at some point between birth and
puberty.
"Over and over again we heard, 'She died because she
couldn't give birth,' " said Aimée Sagara, who runs the family planning
efforts. "Most cesareans are on women who had excisions which were poorly
done."
But many unlucky women never made it to the clinic for
emergency C-sections, they either died in childbirth or developed holes in the
vaginal walls that leaked urine and feces because of their long, obstructed
labours. There are few facilities to repair fistulae in Mali, and few women who
could afford the complex surgery in any case.
The excision of the clitoris has its roots in the animist
tradition of the Dogon. Explanations vary, with some saying that babies are
born of both genders and have to be separated into one or the other, so boys
have their foreskins removed and girls the clitoris.
When the YAGTU women set out to try to end the practice,
they started, again, with meetings with men, and asked them why they did it.
"They said 'It's the Koran.' " That was a
powerful argument, because many Dogon who maintain ties to animist tradition
are also devout Muslims. But YAGTU had in its corner a sympathetic local imam,
Basira Tall. "He was a gift, really," Ms. Tembely said. He travelled
with them to the villages, and when men pointed to the Koran he flipped open
the holy book and said, 'Show me where.' The command to remove the clitoris is
not, of course, in the Koran.
"Then men said, 'We want girls to stay virgins until
marriage and so we lower their sexual pleasure and so we cut the clitoris.'
" We said, 'Well, you're cutting the clitoris but you still have girls who
have babies before they're married. It doesn't work.' Then they said, 'If we do
not, our girls will be strange, they will not marry,' but we found parents who
had not excised to come and give testimonials on how their girls were normal
and could even marry."
Again, they appealed to men's economic sense, pointing
out that women who did not have scars from excision would not have obstructed
labour, would not have stillbirths, would not need ambulance trips or costly
hospital stays.
"Then we brought all the religious leaders together,
and six exciseuses [the women who perform the
procedure, using a traditional knife], and we debated it from top to bottom.
People didn't understand the gravity of the consequences. We brought it into
the light. There were exciseuses who burst into
tears. They had seen stillbirths, and now they knew they were the cause. They
said they would not do any more."
In Sinkarma, a small village of 700 people clinging to
bare, grey rock, Wagouna Dihamidous Wologam, the senior male, said the change
made sense, in the end. "It was difficult, stopping, because it is part of
our culture. But we all saw many women have fistula and cesareans and so we
agreed."
YAGTU had started off working in eight villages, but now
women from many more were walking a full day to reach their office in town,
asking the group to come to their villages as well. They had been funding their
own operations selling the women's crafts, and paying for scooter fuel
themselves, but now Ms. Tembely heard about a Canadian fund for local groups,
and applied. Canada has funded YAGTU with a total of $350,000 during the past
nine years; the grants help pay for four staff people (the rest volunteer), a
small office and agricultural equipment to make the enriched baby foods.
They were still waging their war on female circumcision
when the village women came forward with yet another request: "They said,
'So now we are strong because we spend several years without having babies, but
we need land,' " Ms. Sangara recalled.
In traditional Dogon culture, a woman cannot own land,
and must rely on a man to let her have the use of a small patch where she can
grow the food that will feed the family and any surplus that will pay for their
children's education. YAGTU saw women being loaned scrappy patches of land that
they would work hard to rehabilitate and make fertile, at which point men would
reclaim it.
"We needed a rule that women could use land for five
years," Ms. Tembely said decisively. "Well, that caused a bit of
commotion."
Her ultimate goal was larger. "But if we had said
women must own land for life, they would have completely refused us. So we went
petit à petit, and it took us eight months of campaigning.
We would start with the most difficult man in each village, the one who was the
most opposed, and we would convince him. And then he was our recruit. And in
the end, we got our rule."
The five-year policy was adopted and signed into law by
village chiefs in 2003. Now YAGTU is on a campaign to have that reformed to 10
years of ownership - "until it's permanent."
Access to land has changed a lot of things, said Wadouma
Carambé, a mother of four in Sinkarma. "It used to be that if men had a
meeting, we didn't go. But now we also join, and women are elected to all the
groups that make decisions. Having land changes things. Now we have a place
beside men."
YAGTU has since branched into teaching literacy.
Traditionally, Dogon girls did not go to school, so very few over the age of
about 15 can read, but now two-thirds of female children are sent to school,
and the organization reckons that with their remedial program, they will
achieve universal literacy in a decade. They also work on environmental issues
such as soil erosion and reforestation, provide microcredit, and they are still
working on providing basic income generation.
The Dogon escarpment is one of the most visited spots in
Mali. There are direct flights to its tiny airport from Europe, and the vibrant
and enduring animist-based culture is one of the big draws. But Ms. Tembely is
determined that much in that culture must change.
"Tourists can still come and see the places where
our ancestors are buried - that won't change - but the life of women, that's
got to change," she said. "We're not touching the masks, the magical
symbols. We want to preserve that, our value also comes from that [heritage].
But we want women's life to change, for them, to be healthy, for them to
educate their kids and take care of their families."
WHERE IT HAPPENS
The prevalence of female genital mutilation/cutting among
African women aged 15-49.
GROUP 1: 80% OR MORE
1. Guinea: 99%
2. Mali: 92%
3. Egypt: 97%
4. Sudan (north): 90%
5. Eritrea: 89%
6. Ethiopia: 80%
7. Somalia: 95%
GROUP 2: 25%-79%
1. Senegal: 28%
2. Mauritania: 71%
3. Cote d'Ivoire: 45%
4. Burkina Faso: 77%
5. Chad: 45%
6. Central African Rep.: 36%
7. Kenya: 32%
GROUP 3: 1%-24%
1. Ghana: 5%
2. Benin: 17%
3. Niger: 5%
4. Nigeria: 19%
5. Cameroon: 1%
6. Tanzania: 18%
7. Yemen: 23%
SOURCE: UNICEF
Female genital mutilation/cutting
Female genital cutting is "the partial or total
removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital
organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons." The World Health
Organization groups FGC into four types:
1. Removal of the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris,
with or without removing part of, or the entire clitoris.
2. Removal of the clitoris with partial or total excision
of the labia minora - the smaller inner folds of the vulva.
3. Infibulation, which is the removal of part or all of
the external genitalia and stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening.
4. Other practices include pricking, piercing or cutting
the clitoris or labia; stretching of the clitoris or labia; burning to
cauterize the clitoris and surrounding tissue; scraping of tissue surrounding
the opening of the vagina or cutting the vagina; using corrosive substances or
herbs to cause bleeding or to tighten or narrow the vagina.
The practice is culturally based and transcends religion
as it's found among Christian, Muslim and animist societies. The reasons given
are myriad and varied, including hygiene, preserving virginity, aiding
fertility, suppressing promiscuity, improving aesthetics and marital options
and enhancing male sexual pleasure and potency.
Source: World Health
Organization
When the practice first became widely known, it was
generally referred to as female circumcision. This term, however, draws a parallel
with male circumcision, resulting in confusion. In the case of females, the
practice embodies deep-rooted gender inequality and has profound physical and
social consequences not associated with male circumcision.
The term female genital mutilation gained growing support
in the late 1970s to reinforce the view that it is a violation of human rights
and to promote efforts to end the practice. The term, however, can be
problematic when trying to change people's minds. Parents understandably resent
the suggestion that they are "mutilating" their daughters. As a
result, the term "cutting" has increasingly come to be used to avoid
alienating communities.
When describing policy, however, organizations such as
WHO and the UN now often use the hybrid female genital mutilation/cutting to
express the gravity of the practice and acknowledge the term favoured at the
grassroots level.
Source: Unicef