However Long the Night

by Aimee Molloy

  He was soon accompanied on these journeys by his nephew, Cheikh, and before long, his niece, Duusu. In her thirties, Duusu had never been able to have children, and only after going through the Tostan class in her village did she link this with her own operation. She’d also seen many young girls suffer after their procedure, and one young girl from her village had died afterward. She went to speak to Demba one morning, to offer her assistance. “What you’re doing is so important, because when you are confronted with problems like I have seen, and you can’t do anything about it, it’s very frustrating,” she said to her uncle. “Maybe women have wanted to stop this for a long time and didn’t know what the solution was or how to do it. When your girls are suffering, there is no peace. I want to help you. I believe we have a way to end this practice, and we must speak up. I must also now raise my voice.”

  As the weeks passed and he, Cheikh, and Duusu visited more villages, Demba came to realize that visiting each community just once would not be enough; people needed time, as he had, to absorb the information he was bringing, to discuss the issue among themselves. The weeks stretched by, and on his second and often third visits to each village he was pleased to discover that people had softened to his message and were more open to discussing the information he had come to share. In the village of Faajal, a young man spoke honestly to Demba and Cheikh. “We men would like to see the end of the tradition, because to tell you the truth, we’re tired,” he said. “We want our wives to have sexual pleasure, but it takes so much effort that we sometimes just give up. Men in our ethnic group often marry a second wife from an ethnic group which does not practice the tradition just for this reason.”

  Despite the progress they were making, Cheikh often felt frustrated by people’s stubbornness on the matter, but Demba advised him to remain patient, to allow the conversation to occur as it was meant to. “Even if you know what the answer is, and you know what is right, you must let people discover it themselves,” Demba told his nephew. “You know human nature, and you know if you tell people to stop, they won’t.”

  And Demba knew he would not abandon this mission. The more that women slowly began to open up to him about what they had endured, about the suffering of their daughters, the more he was convinced of the significance of his work. He had also begun to hear stories about the hardships that came with other aspects of their culture, particularly the custom among some ethnic groups of marrying their daughters as young as eight years old. Custom required a husband to wait until the girl was older before the marriage could be consummated, but as Demba understood, you don’t put gas and fire together and expect them to stay apart.

  One evening, after Demba had been on the road for more than two months, he, Duusu, and Cheikh sat in front of a fire in the small village of Kobongoy. They were hours away from their own village, and it had been weeks since they’d been home with their spouses and children. Cheikh turned to Demba, a troubled expression on his face. “Uncle, what is your greatest goal?” he asked. “What is it we are ultimately after?”

  Demba sat in thought for many minutes before answering. “I know what we are doing is oftentimes frustrating and that our legs are very, very tired. But I know that I can’t sit at my home drinking tea and yell out to others to do something. If I want to bring about change, I have to get up and move. Even if I’m tired, I have to get up and move. And what you’ll find is that when you do, God will bring you the strength. I know we are working not just to bring knowledge to our family, but to also bring hope.”

  The fire reflected in Demba’s eyes as he watched the fading embers. “What is my greatest hope? My greatest hope is that after I’m gone, the children sitting out here among us will one day say, ‘We once practiced this harmful tradition because we simply didn’t know any better. Can you believe we did that, and for thousands of years? But we don’t anymore.’ And that will be because of people like you and me.” Demba reached to rest a wrinkled hand on Cheikh’s knee. “Life has legs and continuously walks. We must walk with it or we will be left behind. Remain with me. Let’s keep walking.”

  19

  Biral gi (The Public Declaration)

  Four months after Demba first set out on his journey, he walked back to Thiès, arriving at the Tostan offices before noon. When Molly met him at the door, he looked weary and drained. His caftan was dusty and shredded at the hem along his ankles, revealing cracked, dirt-rimmed toes peeking out from his tattered plastic sandals.

  “I’m here to invite you to accompany me to a few villages that I’ve visited, to meet my family,” he said to Molly. “We talk about you a lot. People are aware that you are concerned about this issue, and it’s important you meet them. Also, I want you to see for yourself what has happened.”

  A few days later, Molly and Demba visited four of the villages where Demba had been working, and in each, they were graciously welcomed by a large gathering of people playing music and dancing. Again and again the villagers discussed their experiences over the last few months: how they had resisted Demba’s message when he first arrived to speak to them, how they had spent days sitting together in a circle, discussing the issue from every angle. And most important, how they had all decided after much debate and dialogue that they were no longer going to cut their girls.

  “It’s true,” Demba said to Molly. “And the same is true in every one of the ten villages I have visited. We are going to make this decision, and we are going to make it as one.”

  Molly spent the day in a state of disbelief. If this was true, if the people of these ten villages were serious about what they were saying, this would mean that a significant number of Senegalese—at least eight thousand people—would be abandoning the practice, that the decision would affect many thousands of girls.

  They remained in the last village until after dinner. As night fell, Molly steered her Land Cruiser along the darkened, unmarked roads back toward Keur Simbara. Demba was silent on the ride back, speaking only to direct Molly on which road to take. Molly enjoyed the silence. She’d come to love the way the Senegalese were able to be with one another without having to fill the space with mindless chatter and unnecessary observations. It had taken her a while, but she’d eventually grown comfortable with the quiet between two people. Even so, as she neared Keur Simbara, her curiosity overwhelmed the tender silence.

  “Do you believe it will really happen?” she asked into the darkness. “Will they all keep their word?”

  Demba turned to look at her and paused to reflect. “I know the people of these ten villages are very serious about what they’re saying, and I trust they will remain true to their decision to stop the practice. But we need to all come together as one family, one community, and voice our decision aloud.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We need to make our decision public. Doing so will give everyone the assurance that the tradition will not be abandoned only by certain people, only in isolated instances. They need to know that every village present will keep their oath. Otherwise, those who do not cut their daughters will always fear they may be the only ones doing so and may be limiting their daughters’ opportunities for marriage.”

  WHEN MOLLY WAS LITTLE, her mother, Ann, would sometimes read her and her sister, Diane, stories about Albert Schweitzer, a German physician who had founded a hospital in West Africa and went on to win the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. Driving into the village of Diabougou on February 14, 1998, Molly was reminded of these stories, of their descriptions of African villages that seemed to Molly—a girl of eight—to be too remote and magical to actually exist. But now here it was—Diabougou.

  The village had been chosen, at Demba’s suggestion, as the location for the meeting of the ten villages he had visited. In its center stood one of the thickest, most verdant neem trees Molly had ever seen. It was surrounded by paths, like the spokes of a wheel, spreading in every direction to huts made of palm leaves. The Bambaras of Diabougou were known for their dancing, and when Molly stepped from her c
ar into the cool morning air, she was greeted by the sound of drumming and scores of women dressed in colorful boubous and head scarves. The sounds and the sight took her breath away.

  Hundreds of people were present, joined by villagers from Keur Simbara, Malicounda Bambara, and Nguerigne Bambara. Dozens of girls danced among the group, each dressed in her finest clothes and with her hair plaited in intricate patterns. The women tended to the guests, some ensuring they had seats while others carried a large tub of drinking water to a cool spot in the shade. The participants of the Tostan classes in Malicounda Bambara and Nguerigne Bambara had been invited as special guests, and Molly took a seat in one of the chairs under the tree to wait for Maimouna, Kerthio, Ourèye, and the others to arrive. In minutes she was pulled from her chair and into the circle of dancers. She loved dancing among the African women, loved the way Africans seemed to dance not just with their bodies, but with their souls. She moved fluidly and effortlessly beside them, her boubou catching the wind. Eventually, the village chief raised his hand to ask for silence. The music stopped, and all eyes followed him to where the women of the Malicounda Bambara Tostan class, joined by Ourèye, proudly strode into the square. The village chief walked to greet them.

  “You are pioneers who have lit the way for us,” he said. “You are the ones responsible for all of us being here today. We stand to honor you.” And with that, the hundreds of people gathered in the cool February morning stood and applauded.

  THE DAY WAS LONG. One by one, people spoke about their experiences with the tradition, some bravely sharing the problems they’d witnessed because of it. Several hours into the meeting, Molly decided to leave Diabougou to allow the villagers some time to talk among themselves.

  Later that night, under the gauzy veil of a mosquito net in a hotel room forty minutes away, Molly was unable to sleep. She lay on the thin bed, the sound of drumming echoing in her thoughts. She didn’t know what, exactly, would come of the discussion happening in Diabougou, but regardless of the outcome, the magnitude of what was happening began to sink in.

  If these ten villages did decide to collectively and publicly abandon this tradition, if this was the way to end the practice of female genital cutting and spare thousands of girls years of needless pain and a lifetime of potential problems, then what would now be required of her? She felt unprepared for what might lie ahead, for the responsibility that Tostan might have in all of this. Taking the movement any further would mean reaching out to hundreds, if not thousands, of social networks across Senegal and maybe even into other countries where FGC was practiced. She didn’t know how she would do that—after all, Tostan was a small organization, with a small staff and a budget of just $300,000—but if the men and women at Diabougou declared an end to the practice, she knew she had to find a way.

  She gave up on the idea that she would get any sleep and dressed quickly, before driving back to the village and making her way among the unlit streets, back to Demba and Ourèye, to find out what the representatives of the thirteen villages had decided. It was nearly four in the morning when she arrived, yet a large crowd of people was still gathered under the neem tree. She went to the schoolroom being used to host the guests who had come from other villages and found mattresses strewn across the floor. Demba and Ourèye greeted her, the smell of the fire lingering on their skin.

  “I couldn’t wait any longer,” Molly admitted. “How is the discussion going?”

  “We’ve made a decision,” Demba said, handing her the text someone had written in Wolof. “This will explain it all.”

  Molly took the paper and sat down, straining to read by the dim light of the gas lamp on the table. She read it several times before beginning the work of translating it into French. It took her two hours to finish, checking with several people to make sure she was getting each word correct. She and the others were exhausted when, later in the morning, journalists, UNICEF staff, and local and national government representatives began to arrive in Diabougou to hear the news of what had happened that weekend in the village. Demba’s niece was chosen to read the statement. She stood proudly before the crowd, her amplified voice echoing throughout the village.

  “We, the fifty representatives of more than eight thousand people residing in thirteen villages declare our firm commitment to end the practice we call ‘the tradition’ in our community,” she began, “and our firm commitment to spread our knowledge and the spirit of our decision to our respective villages and to other communities still practicing. We would like to take this opportunity to express our deep appreciation and gratitude to the women of Malicounda Bambara, Nguerigne Bambara, and Keur Simbara who, under difficult circumstances, led the way and indicated the path to follow for the government and other communities who are committed to assuring that girl children and women will no longer be subjected to the dangers of cutting. Our meeting here in Diabougou today is the result of the determination of these courageous women.”

  THE NEWS OF THE Diabougou declaration spread quickly across Senegal through media coverage and word of mouth. Four months later, on June 2, 1998, eighteen villages that had also been through the Tostan program came together to hold their own public declaration in the village of Medina Cherif, in the region of Kolda.

  These declarations captured the attention of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. A year earlier, in 1997, Ms. Clinton had paid a state visit to Senegal. At the request of the U.S. ambassador, Molly had accompanied Ms. Clinton on a visit to Saam Njaay. Though twelve years had passed since Molly had lived in the village, it had continued to thrive, and since that visit Molly had written to Ms. Clinton of the extraordinary events surrounding the declarations in Senegal. The First Lady wrote back encouraging letters of support. Molly soon received the news that Ms. Clinton, who was scheduled to return to Senegal with President Bill Clinton, wanted to take time to meet with and personally congratulate the people behind these courageous decisions.

  The meeting took place at Dakar’s Le Meridien Président Hotel, where the Clintons were staying. “It was not easy for women and men to come together to stand against and speak out against a key ancient custom,” Ms. Clinton said to Maimouna, Kerthio, Ourèye, Demba, and the others who had come to meet with her, some traveling hours by bus from their villages. Afterward, she invited them to a roundtable discussion of human rights presided over by President Clinton, who asked the villagers to stand and be recognized as leading activists for human rights at the grassroots level, an example for all. Not long after, at a 1999 National Democratic institute dinner in Washington, DC, President Clinton spoke of this meeting. “We walked in that room in Senegal, and all those women came up with their men supporters,” he said. “I’m telling you, it made chills run up and down my spine. And I wish that every American could have seen it.”

  The news of these pronouncements, as well as the Clintons’ visit, received full-page coverage in several daily newspapers. Unlike in the aftermath of the public declaration in Malicounda Bambara, Molly spent her days fielding phone calls from people around the country congratulating Tostan on its efforts and expressing their astonishment at the number of villagers coming forward to share these brave decisions with the world.

  This increased recognition of Tostan’s efforts further consumed Molly, who became obsessively focused on her work and even more aware of the extent of the problem. The World Health Organization had recently announced a startling finding. While they’d previously reported that two million African girls were being cut each year, new research showed that this number was a gross underestimation; they now believed that number to be as high as three million.

  “The work engulfed me,” Molly recalls. “We had so much to do still but were always in a state of crisis because we had very little money. I was scrounging for funding. I was traveling a lot. Tostan took up so much of my time, at the expense of all other aspects of my life. For one thing, I could have been a better mother. Things were not always easy for Zoé.”

  By this time, Zoé
was thirteen and living in Dakar, where she attended a bilingual school, while Molly stayed in Thiès. Living with a family friend of Molly’s, Zoé had—perhaps by necessity rather than choice—grown into an independent and adaptable girl. The following year she chose to leave Dakar to spend her sophomore year in the United States, enrolling in a school near Boston and living with another friend of the family.

  Zoé enjoyed her time in America but struggled to feel as if she totally belonged. Some aspects of American culture confused her—the focus on physical appearance, the way so many women felt pressure to be thin, some even making themselves sick to achieve this. “I was going through a lot in high school,” Zoé says now. “And while I always knew that my mom loved and supported me, I also knew that everything in her life revolved around her work. I understand and appreciate it now, but it wasn’t always easy. She was away a lot, and when she was here, she was at work. In the evenings or on the weekends all of our conversations were about Tostan. All of her friends are associated with Tostan. All of our visitors—and we always have visitors—are here because of Tostan. For my entire life, there’s never been a separation between my mom’s personal life and her work. I don’t know how she does it. It’s emotionally draining sometimes. She breathes her work. She lives it. She is it.”

  The struggle to balance her roles as a mother and as the head of Tostan is one Molly would never completely resolve; despite the conflict she felt, it was a sacrifice she needed to make at the time. As Molly saw it, her organization may have uncovered a means to facilitate the widespread abandonment of FGC, and she was determined to bring the Tostan program to as many Senegalese villages as possible. While she’d hoped others working on the issue would share her enthusiasm for what was happening, she was surprised to find this was rarely the case. She was frustrated to learn of conferences on FGC to which Tostan had not been invited or meetings among grassroots organizations that didn’t even mention the public declarations or Tostan’s work.