Declaration

Yesterday the other new volunteers and I went to a village about four hours from Thies, near Kaolack, to witness a declaration to end female genital cutting, forced marriage, and child marriage. The FGC work is what Tostan is probably most well known for, though it tends to be more of a side effect of the health and human rights education they receive from Tostan programs. That certainly doesn't lessen its impact or importance, but it's certainly a good indication that the educational programs have an excellent outcome.

We reached the village (Segre Bambara) by taking two sept-places, which are station wagons that have been converted to have seven passenger seats. Usually they act as a communal taxi: as soon as there are seven people that want to go to a certain destination, the car leaves the garage. Thankfully, we had 7 people in our groups, so the car was more of a private taxi ride than a sweltering waiting room.

On the way to the village, on increasingly difficult roads, we were able to see some areas that had received rain recently. The area we had been traveling through had been dry and completely covered in orange sand, but the areas that had received rain were covered in a sparse green fuzz of new vegetation. We passed herds of goats and cattle, giant baobab trees, and increasing numbers of village compounds with thatched huts.

We split up once we got to the declaration, and another volunteer and I were gradually herded by various people to the front row on under one of the open tents that formed a square around the performance and declaration space. I ended up sitting in the speakers section, surrounded by the village chief, imam, governor's representative, the national director of Tostan, a representative from Amnesty International, and a delegation from Sierra Leone. There were perhaps a dozen white people present in total, half of whom had come in my group.

The event was half solemn declaration and half entertainment. Speeches of support for ending FGC were interspersed with songs, dancing, and skits. Groups of children dressed in white teeshirts did a song and dance, accompanied by a speech by one of the village women. The children had ribbons in the colors of Senegal--green, red, and yellow--tied to their wrists. There was also a performance group which included (in addition to the band) a man on stilts, another man in a beastlike costume (think Cousin It with dreadlocks and fangs), and dancers with white stripes of paint on their faces and arms.

Representatives from some 46 villages lined up to show their decision to end female genital cutting in their communities (the signs they carry have their village names written on them):


One of the village religious men who I was sitting next to (don't be fooled by the dignified appearance; he kept asking me for money or my sunglasses and laughing uproariously when I responded in Wolof "Another time, if God wills it").


One of the performers, dressed in the national colors of Senegal, and some of the crowd:


Part of the village of about 600 people where the declaration was held:


We were wearing traditional Senegalese clothing for the ceremony, making us approximately 2% less noticeable but much more accepted.


Some of the dancers who performed in between speeches and statements: