Friday, February 20

The Radisson Blu's breakfast buffet was a very fine way to start the day: omelet bar, granola, assorted cheeses, breads, sweet rolls, fresh fruit, bissop, orange, and grapefruit juice, and hot coffee. Fully sated, we gathered for our bus ride to Thies, about 6o kilometers from Dakar. To get there we had to drive through Dakar which is built on a large peninsula with the hotel at one end and the road out of he city on the other side and other end. There is Once out of the city we did get on a major highway/toll road for the better part of the distance. There was not much to see, the landscape is dry, some crops growing, and baobub trees scattered throughout.

When we got to Thies (pronounced chess in Noon language), the third largest city in Senegal with a little over 300,000 people, we drove through the city to the headquarters of Tostan. Most of us had read the autobiography (However Long the Night) of the founder, Molly Melching, an American woman who had lived in Senegal since the 1970s. The organization had started with work in a single village focused on educating women about their human rights and then about their bodies and health literacy. This organization was the major force in Senegal to end the practice of female genital cutting. Tostan's mission is "to empower African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect for human rights." Tostan takes a holistic approach to development by facilitating a human rights-based, non-formal education program, called the Community Empowerment Program, that aims to empower communities to lead their own development. Although Tostan is well known for its success in accelerating the abandonment of female genital cutting, the program has also achieved results in the impact areas of governance, health, economic growth, education, and environment, as well as four key issues: child protection, empowerment of women and girls, early childhood development, and abandonment of female genital cutting. Tostan is the winner of the 2007 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize for its "significant contributions to the alleviation of human suffering."

When we arrived at the headquarters, the staff was gathered outside and broke into song as we got off the bus, happy to see us. We had a very short tour of the headquarters, mostly focused on finding every available restroom before we set off on our day's adventure. I ended up in the private restroom of one of the chief administrators inside his office.

Back into the bus with a young American woman who was doing a sort of internship with Tostan and who was our liaison with the people we were to visit as well as our translator. We drove about another 45 minutes to the village of Simbara.

When we arrived we were greeted by many women and a few men and escorted to the meeting place under a Neem tree. Women holding mall children were seated in chairs around the circle and small groups of young children were seated together on the ground in front of their mothers. Several men were seated together at the far end of the circle. We were given seats on one side of the circle. The leaders of the village spoke to us about their village and the work Tostan has done. We were welcomed by Demba Diawara. He is the religious leader of the village who recognized that the Koran does not address FGC and supported its end in his village. Demba Diawara, who has never been to formal school, had after participation in Tostan's program, understood the practice of FGC as a group norm and has, since committing to end the practice, walked to 348 villages to raise awareness for the abandonment.

We were told about Malicounda Bibmara, the first village to end female genital cutting in Senegal. Keur Simbara was one of the first villages to end female genital cutting, On July 31, 1997, the women of Malicounda Bambara decided to announce their decision to abandon female genital cutting (FGC) to the world. They were joined by 20 Senegalese journalists as well as representatives of the Ministries of Health and Family, Social Action and National Solidarity to witness the first public declaration ending the practice of FGC. This social convention is believed to have originated in Egypt over 2,000 years ago and today is practiced in at least 28 African countries. Senegal passed a law forbidding FGC in 1999 but the practice continues in parts of the country and will only stop when communities themselves choose to do so, based on their understanding of the merits of such a decision, groups advocating for a rights-based approach have said. More than 4,000 villages in Senegal have abandoned FGM since 1997 with the support of Tostan, which has also recorded success in neighbouring Mauritania and the Gambia. Their approach also encourages in abandonment to be done in clusters - whereby groups of villages and not just individuals decide to end the practice. Tostan has since developed many programs and all are present in this village.

They are especially proud of the small delegation of women that visited India's Barefoot College to study solar energy and brought it back to the village. Now the village is able to have light in the homes at night and students are better able to study. The village has also built a well. The community has developed a system of microcredit. Governance in the village is done by a management committee of 17, 7 men and 10 women. Each committee member goes through a four day training studying leadership, management, communication, and social mobilization. They have developed a community action plan around social mobilization in the areas of the environment, irrigation, income generation, child protection, and health and using this action plan are able to link to NGOs. We were told about how education has a new focus. In the past, boys spent 7 years studying the Koran. Now boys and girls are educated and the village has a program for early childhood education.

The children of the village sang to us a song of democracy. To paraphrase the words from the song;

Democracy is very important to development. It can give opportunity to the community. Democracy doesn't have borders. It was born with the generation of human rights. It is important to learn to support the community, the parents, and the development in the country.

Another male village leader provided some historical perspective. This village of 330 people was created in 1895. Before Tostan's involvement, men, women, and children would not sit together. Now all sit together, talk together, and arrive at decisions together. This village leader stated he had never been to school, but with the assistance of Tostan he developed skills in public speaking. Tostan uses the approach to learn how to solve problems, not to teach a "give me" mentality. Some of the village accomplishments he addressed were the installation of a tank to store the well water to keep it clean and safe, to build roads, to improve access to health care which includes a local midwife to care for pregnant women, the installation of solar panels for electricity, having cleaned up the village (it was immaculate), the construction of latrines, the development of community activities to allow, especially, the participation of women, voter registration, the establishment of bank accounts, improved nutrition, develop local jobs to keep young people in the village universal education, and increased support from the government.

Doosa, a 55 year old woman, spoke to us as one of the women who went to India. She told us that now men and women can do the same jobs in the village. Another man, Bademba, who is a "Tostan" guru and the eighth chief of the village, told us that Simbara was the name of the first chief who created the village.

We had more music and some of our group joined in with dancing with the children. Women around the circle were playing drums and children on the ground were improvising to provide percussion. After the formal presentation we toured the village. The village was impeccably clean, no litter, no trash anywhere. We saw the building where solar energy now allowed radio communication, the inside of a home, the classroom for early childhood education, and the small health center. Posters on the wall of the health center had pictures and text about pregnancy and its complications and tuberculosis.

I was enable to engage in conversation with several of the young mothers. Most of the people there did not speak French, but I could connect with several who did. I told them I was a doctor for children. One woman told me she was concerned about how her two year old was not growing well. I learned his diet was primarily millet and later learned that this is a high protein food. Another woman told me she is concerned because her little boys eyes have too much water coming out of them. His eyes did not look infected and I instructed her in how to do tear duct massage with the hopes that it would help.

The time came for our departure and we all got back on the bus. At about that time some of the older children were coming back into the village from school. We thanked our hosts and hostesses and departed with sad feelings about leaving, but so grateful to have had the opportunity to have visited.

Our next stop was the Tostan Center for Capacity Building and Sustainable Development, the training center, for lunch. We ate in a large lunch room and our group was spread out among several different tables so we could eat with the Tostan staff. At my table was a young man who worked in administration and another one of the women.

After lunch, back into the bus for the drive through Thies and back to Dakar. We made one stop for gas at OilLibya. We passed a new building set in a field with not much of anything around it, no cars in the parking lot, which had a sign that it was the children's hospital. (I later learned that it was built by the Chinese, but is in a location remote from Dakar and pretty much inaccessible to the people who need it the most.) We continued back the same way we had come. As we drove through Dakar, we passed the African Renaissance Monument built by the North Koreans. It is a 49m tall. The formal dedication occurred on April 4, 2010, Senegal's "National Day", commemorating the 50th anniversary of the country's independence from France. It is the tallest statue in Africa. The statue was not well-received, in part because of its cost, and in part because of its style. Local imams argue that a statue depicting a human figure is idolatrous, and object to the perceived immodesty of the semi-nude male and female figures.

Once back at the Radisson Blu, we had a little down time. I walked over to the mall that was attached to one end of the hotel. After walking past the spa, I was in a fairly upscale mall with some nice designer shops, an upscale sports clothes store, an upscale store with very fashionable thobes, the long gown over pants worn by the Muslim men. There was a large supermarket which I wandered through. The mall had a very large underground parking garage and next door on the ground level was a large bowling alley. Almost everyone in the supermarket was white and about 90% of the people in the mall were white. This was not the local shopping center.

After a bit of rest I went downstairs and outside and found about half our group in a sort of cabana or tent, having drinks, with Molly Melching, the founder of Tostan. She is about my age, very friendly and just an amazing woman with what she has worked so hard to create. I had so much respect for her, having visited the village earlier in the day, but also because I had read her book, However Long the Night, and recognized where she had come from to get where she is today.

Cocktails finished, we went into a private dining room for Shabbat in Senegal. We had a menorah and a real Challah said the Shabbat blessings together as a group and ate a wonderful chicken dinner and continued our conversations. With dinner finished, the end of a very full day came to a close and back to the room for a deep sleep.