Introduction

Salaam Aleïkoum,

The post below, courtesy of Cody Donahue, who recently found it on a Senegalese forum, had a huge impact on me. Its anonymous author confirmed the importance of our project in her own way. African youths, both rural and urban, are confronted by an urgent need for communication. They are progressively adopting information technology. The next step is to make the adoption of these new tools more universal, so that they can support the attitudinal changes necessary for the abandonment of harmful traditional practices such as FGC or forced/child marriage.

“[…] my mother is Pulaar and my father is Wolof and my father never liked that. They did it to me when my father was on mission and my mother, little sister, and I were on vacation at my grandmother’s, who believes in the tradition. Her cousin performed the operation on me and my sister and the thing I’ll never forget is the memory of how sick I was at first and how my mother was afraid that my father would find out. He still doesn’t know to this day. My little sister said she was going to tell, but I was afraid there would be a divorce. I got married but it still troubles me and it’s not pretty. I’ve never forgiven them and I will never do this to my children because it’s dangerous.”

-GD