Wednesday, September 11, 2024

By Marietou Bâ

Touba, Ivory Coast

When he was a fetishist, convinced that it would bring him “power”, Moussa Diallo (*) regularly smeared himself with an ointment made from the glans of an excised woman’s clitoris reduced to powder.

“I put it on my body and face for three years” every three months or so, ‘because I wanted too much to be a great chef’, confides the fifty-year-old. That was around ten years ago, when he was consulted as a witchdoctor and healer around Touba in the north-west of the country.

This case is not unique. In several regions of Côte d’Ivoire, “this organ is used to make love potions, get money or reach high political office”, reports Labe Gneble, director of the National Organization for Children, Women and Families (Onef).

On the underground market, its price can exceed the minimum wage (75,000 CFA francs, 114 euros).

In Touba, “we hear that it’s highly prized for mystical practices”, confirms police lieutenant N’Guessan Yosso.

Following interviews with former fetishists and excisers, researchers, NGOs and social workers, AFP was able to establish the existence of a trade in the clitoral tassels of excised women, transformed into powder and sold for the powers they are said to possess.

The origins of this illegal trade are obscure, and its scale difficult to estimate. But local players are convinced that it is one of the obstacles in the fight against excision, which has been banned in Côte d’Ivoire since 1998.

“Pounded with pebbles” –

Around Touba, when he was a feticheur – a figure sometimes regarded as a traditional doctor – Mr. Diallo was often approached by excisers seeking protection from evil spells.

This genital mutilation, most often performed between childhood and adolescence, can be seen by families as a rite of passage to adulthood or a means of repressing a girl’s sexuality, explains Unicef.

Perpetuated for centuries by different religions in West Africa, it constitutes a violation of fundamental rights, according to Unicef. In addition to the physical and psychological pain, its consequences are serious, even fatal: sterility, complications during childbirth, infections, bleeding…

In the middle of the forest or in a house, Mr. Diallo accompanied the excisers to a sacralized place for the occasion of one or more dozen excisions. Close to these women, he was able to obtain the famous powder.

“When they cut the clitoris”, the excisers ‘first dry it for a month or two’, then ‘pound it with pebbles’, he describes.

The result is a “black powder” which they sometimes mix with “leaves, roots, bark” or “shea butter”.

They can sell it for around “100,000 CFA francs (152 euros) if the girl is a virgin”, “65,000 CFA francs (99 euros) if she has already had children”, or barter it for services, continues Mr. Diallo.

According to the man, who is now campaigning against excision, the trade continues.

In the village where he now lives, he says he recently bought a powder from an excisor. A mixture of human flesh and plants, he says, which AFP was able to observe without being able to have it analyzed. The product is impossible to obtain without a financial transaction.

– Organ trafficking” –

Depending on the village, the clitoris of girls is usually buried, thrown into a river or given to parents, explain former excisers.

But one of them, interviewed in the west of the country on condition of anonymity, confirms the occult use of clitorises torn from women.

“People would pretend to be the girls’ parents and leave with the clitoris,” she recalls.

Among these imposters were fetishists who used the organ in “incantations” and then sold it, she asserts.

Another accused her colleagues of being accomplices. They “gave it to people who were doing a bad job” for mystical purposes.

Mutilated as a child, Bintou Fofana (*), now in her thirties, recounts how her mother, aware of the trade, told her that she wanted the flesh back.

Under Ivorian law, the trade in the glans of the clitoris is “organ trafficking” and “concealment” punishable, like excision, by several years’ imprisonment and fines, stresses lawyer Marie Laurence Didier Zézé.

The Odienné-based prefecture of police, which covers five regions in northwestern Côte d’Ivoire, says it has never prosecuted anyone for such trafficking.

“People don’t give information about sacred things,” laments Lieutenant N’Guessan Yosso.

According to residents interviewed in Touba, excisers, considered prisoners of evil spirits, are feared and respected.

– “Far-fetched” –

“The clitoris cannot give powers”, sweeps Abidjan-based gynecologist Jacqueline Chanine, ‘it’s far-fetched’.

Yet the practice can be found in several regions, say researchers.

Health socio-anthropologist Dieudonné Kouadio was able to see this for himself during work on excision carried out 150 km north of Touba, in the town of Odienné.

“I was presented with a box containing the dried, ablated organ in the form of a slightly black powder”, says this researcher at the University of Bouaké.

He reported this discovery in a study carried out with the Djigui Foundation, a major player in the fight against female genital mutilation in Côte d’Ivoire.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs, which validated the conclusions of this study published in 2021, did not respond to our requests for comment.

In the Denguélé district, which includes Odienné, farmers “buy clitorises. They mix the powder with the seeds to improve production in their fields”, explains Nouho Konaté, a member of the Djigui Foundation, which has been gathering information on excision for 16 years.

During the awareness-raising campaigns he organizes, Mr. Konaté reveals the existence of this traffic to the parents of young girls, who are “devastated”.

Further south, in the central-western region, women use powdered clitorises as aphrodisiacs, hoping, for example, to prevent their husbands from being unfaithful, explains doctor of criminology Safie Roseline N’da, author with two sociology researchers of a scientific article on the fight against excision published in 2023, which mentions this traffic.

The three academics also report the use of the blood of excised women to worship gods.

This is not the only occult practice linked to the use of a body part in this country, according to Me Didier Zézé.

“Mysticism is central to everyday life, touching every sphere of social, professional, amorous and family life”, notes Canadian anthropologist Boris Koenig, a specialist in occult practices in Côte d’Ivoire, adding that it is not generally ‘illicit’.

– Survival –

This trade is “one of the reasons for the survival of female genital mutilation” in Côte d’Ivoire, denounces the Djigui Foundation like Onef, an NGO that has been fighting to improve women’s living conditions since the 1990s.

According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the prevalence rate of excision has fallen in the country since it was banned, and remains below the West African average (28%).

But one Ivorian woman in five still claims to have undergone genital mutilation, and in some northern regions the rate can exceed 50%.

In places where the former Diallo fetishist was called, up to “30 women” were excised in a single day, he asserts. The period from January to March is favored, when the warm, dry harmattan allows for better healing, he adds.

In Touba, staff at the region’s only social center note that excision continues to be carried out clandestinely, and remains difficult to assess.

It hides behind traditional festivals with no apparent link, they say, citing the arrival of excisers from neighboring Guinea, just a few kilometers away, where the excision rate exceeds 90%.

(*) Names have been changed.

Humaniterre with AFP

Credit photo AFP Sié Kambou

Nouho Konate, a member of the Djigui Foundation, which has been fighting FGM in the region for 16 years, talks to Odienne about the phenomenon of excision on May 20, 2024.