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D R A M A++Q U E E N

What's the worst thing your mother ever did to you? Send your submission to the Drama Queen for a Day contest

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T A B L E++T A L K

What brilliant solutions have you come up with to solve daily hassles? Join the "Mothers of Invention" discussion in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Class warfare, Part Two
By Ira Eisenberg
How a California high school became a battleground in the struggle over what America's students should be taught about homosexuality
(06/02/98)

The showdown at San Leandro High, Part One
By Ira Eisenberg
A battle between parents and gay-rights advocates may be a preview of the country's next great culture war
(06/01/98)

Infant revolution
By Dawn MacKeen
The children who are giving Nike a dressing down
(05/29/98)

No turning back
By Sallie Tisdale
At what point do you need to tell your child he can't come home again?
(05/28/98)

My son, the cross-dresser
By Lisen Stromberg
Why are tomboys cute but "janegirls" weird?
(05/27/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINKARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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a f r i c a n_.a w a k e n i n g

Senegal turns against the tyranny of female genital mutilation
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BY VIVIENNE WALT

KER SIMBARA, Senegal -- For months, Dousu Konate resisted her adopted daughter's pleas until finally, she says, she couldn't bear the girl's anguish anymore. Left to Konate's care by her relatives from another town, the girl, Buya Ba, arrived in the minuscule Senegalese village of Ker Simbara last year at 14 and immediately became the object of derision to other teenagers. Isolated in this community deep in the countryside, she begged Konate to let her undergo the one thing that would win her instant acceptance: having her clitoris and vaginal lips cut off.

"The girls mocked her," Konate recalls. "The boys said, 'You'll never find a husband.'" Buya had come from a village that didn't practice female circumcision, and Konate, who had begun to have serious doubts about the operation, hoped the girl could avoid it entirely. But it was too high a price to pay, to rebel against a tradition that had lasted hundreds of years. Buya was regarded with repulsion, shunned from casual friendships and sometimes even conversation, and suspected of being too unclean to cook food or wash clothes.

Finally, late last year, Konate woke Buya before dawn, wrapped a traditional cord around her waist -- "to protect her from pain" -- and led her to the village circumcision hut. There three old women held Buya down while the traditional cutter sliced off Buya's genitals with a razor blade. They told her not to scream or cry, since her cowardice would embarrass the family.

Then they laid her down to heal, using herbal powders and coagulating blood to help seal the open wound. The men slaughtered a goat in celebration. Everyone turned out to dance, sing and rattle calabashes strung with cowrie shells. Four months later, Buya, just 15, was married.

But in February, shortly after Buya's wedding, something happened that could have eliminated the young woman's anguish and pain. Ker Simbara's 100 inhabitants gathered at a meeting and decided they would never again circumcise their girls. After centuries of cutting off the female genitals, Ker Simbara declared the practice forever dead.

This wasn't the first attempt to eradicate female circumcision in Africa, of course. Starting in the '70s, development officials, the World Health Organization, various United Nations agencies, Western feminists and, more recently, several African governments have railed against it -- all with little impact. Even a couple of years ago, rebellion would have seemed impossible, confronting as it did sensitive taboos that have endured since the Pharaohs. But this time the revolution began from within, by women who no longer wanted to hand down the ritual to their daughters.

And the results have been remarkable. During the last year, 13 Senegalese villages have declared an end to female circumcision -- and on Tuesday 15 more villages signed declarations banning it.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 130 million African women are circumcised, in roughly 28 countries. About 20 percent of Senegalese women are circumcised at some point between infancy and puberty, either by clitoridectomy, the removal of the clitoris, or, in most cases, the more radical infibulation. With this method, the inner and outer lips of the vagina and the clitoris are all removed. The wound is often sealed, leaving just a small hole for urine and blood to pass through. Then, on a girl's wedding night, circumcisers are called in to cut the girl open again so her groom can penetrate her.

N E X T+P A G E: "We didn't talk to the men about this; this was secret."