by Aimee Molloy
“And now tell me how you spend your time when you’re not here,” he asked. She had a lot to tell. Unable to sit still for very long or to decline any invitation offered to her—whether it be from a famous poet she’d met at Ousmane and Carrie’s or a taxi driver she’d struck up a conversation with on her way back from the market—she told Cheikh Anta of her enthrallment with the people and life of Dakar and the observations she was making about Senegalese culture and the Wolof language.
When it came to Wolof, Cheikh Anta insisted Molly speak only the purist form of it. Since Senegal had first come under French control and French was instituted as the official language, many people, especially those in Dakar, had a tendency to mix French and Wolof, diluting the rich Wolof vocabulary.
“Never mix in French words when you’re speaking Wolof,” he would scold her during their conversations. “Doing so just impoverishes the language. Find the right word.”
Molly did everything she could to please Cheikh Anta, having developed a deep admiration for her mentor. Unlike many other men she was meeting, whose first question was to inquire if she was married or had children, Cheikh Anta was interested in her ideas. He treated her not like a student, but a scholar, and he wasn’t shy about encouraging her to focus her studies on the importance of African languages for development.
As her semester drew to a close, Molly asked Cheikh Anta if she might remain in Senegal to continue her studies with him. He happily agreed—a decision that left no doubt in her mind that her stay in Senegal would be prolonged indefinitely. The news came as a great disappointment to her parents, her mother especially. As Diane recalls, “My mom couldn’t make sense of Molly’s choice to live so far away, in such a different culture. She’d call me often to ask the same thing: ‘When is your sister coming home?’”
6
Tostan
Molly’s transition from the study of French literature to a career in development began to take root during her second year in Africa, largely through her work as a translator—work she was initially drawn to out of a need for income and the chance for new adventures. “I get to travel to Mali,” she wrote her parents. “I am so lucky, lucky, lucky!”
Over time, she came to especially love the experience of accompanying visiting development officers to rural villages, where she’d find herself translating not just the language, but also the culture of Senegal. Through these experiences, she soon became very invested in what she observed in the villages, many of which were so remote, the only way to access them was through narrow, improvised paths cut through tall fields of dried grass. She found that most villages lacked even the most basic necessities, such as electricity and clean drinking water, and the opportunities for medical care were abysmal. Most children were not being vaccinated and fell ill from preventable diseases, such as polio, measles, and tetanus. Molly had seen the typical pictures of malnourished African children, bellies extended and swollen. Now such children stood in front of her in these remote communities of southeastern Senegal.
What surprised Molly the most, however, were the interactions she witnessed between development officers and the villagers. “The meetings were very stiff on both sides,” she remembers. “There was little true dialogue happening, no deep inquiry into what was working for villagers and what they thought should be changed. I kept waiting for a conversation to happen, but it rarely did.”
Rather, it seemed that many development officers arrived with a clear plan of what they wanted to accomplish and the results they desired without ever asking the villagers if they shared these goals. To make matters worse, most development projects did not include a basic education program the communities needed to effectively manage the projects once the so-called experts left. Without the knowledge of how to sustain the projects, they lay dormant, and years later, when representatives of the organizations returned, they would discover rusty vehicles, broken-down millet grinders and pumps, and nonfunctional health centers.
After these trips, Molly would return to her studies and her life in Dakar, but she couldn’t easily disregard her experiences in the villages, and certainly not after spending more time at the Sembène home and in Cheikh Anta Diop’s office. Alone with Carrie or Cheikh Anta, and during the Sunday afternoon gatherings with intellectuals from across Africa, Molly engaged in intense discussions about the future of Senegal. This was just fourteen years after Senegal had secured its independence from France, and the conversation often centered around life in postcolonial Africa. The 1960s had been a time of great transition for French-speaking West African countries—many had received independence at the same time—and citizens were confronted with the disturbing realities of political turmoil or dictatorship, corruption at all levels of society, and bleak social conditions. The question was often asked: Were the years of colonization truly over? Having been psychologically submitted to French assimilation policies for decades, could these countries conceivably make a decisive break with the colonizers the moment independence was declared?
At the time, Leopold Sédar Senghor was the president of Senegal. The first president elected after independence, Senghor—a Senegalese poet and cultural theorist—was very French in his lifestyle and his approach to politics, and like many concerned Senegalese, both Ousmane and Cheikh Anta were outspoken critics of him. As they saw it, Senghor appeared to be calling for a restoration of African culture, but his own lifestyle was, in fact, highly dictated by Western thought and ideals, leaving the majority of Senegalese who did not speak French feeling marginalized.
Ousmane once told Molly, “Senghor and his political cohorts have turned their backs on the problems of the people in the rural villages of Senegal, on Senegalese values, and worst of all on our mother tongue.” For Ousmane and Cheikh Anta, there was one element critical to the economic and cultural development and the “true” independence of Senegal: the promotion of national languages.
The situation was complicated. While French was the official language of the country, less than 20 percent of the population actually communicated fluently in French. Most people spoke Wolof or one of five other major national languages: Pulaar, Serer, Diola, Soninke, and Mandinka. Even so, the nation’s formal schools were conducted exclusively in French, and teachers were trained to use French standards and techniques such as rote memorization with little respect for the cultural and social environment of Senegal. It could well be argued that this French system of schooling was hindering the progress of the majority of the people of Senegal. While students spent weeks learning the correct pronunciation of a language they did not use at home, one out of every four children in Senegal was dying before the age of five. And women were particularly far behind when it came to education. Female literacy in the country was just over half that of male literacy—23 percent compared to 44 percent—and the discrepancy was even greater in rural villages.
Ousmane and Cheikh Anta were leading advocates for designating Wolof the official language of Senegal. In a culture where the idea of masla (making others happy at all costs) is key, both were unafraid of saying exactly what they thought, no matter how bold or controversial the idea. Although Ousmane had once written exclusively in French, he’d begun to make films in Wolof, so that the people at the village level could understand and hear a different story of their history and culture than that presented by the government. He wrote stories such as “Le Mandat” (“The Money Order”), which was later adapted into a film in Wolof. In it, Ousmane explores the frustration, humiliation, and inadequacy that an ordinary Senegalese man, Ibrahima Dieng, experiences as a citizen in a land where an alien language is imposed on the masses.
“I was becoming aware of how enthusiastically people responded when I spoke and interacted with them in Wolof, helping me to further understand Ousmane’s and Cheikh Anta’s ideas on the importance of national languages for development,” Molly says now. “This really hit home for me when I visited rural communities and saw how efforts to help villagers were failing.” She b
egan to question the very nature of how one helps others, understanding that while outside efforts toward progress were done with good intentions, they were rarely producing the hoped-for results. This was partly due to the fact that education was limited to French.
“How can Senegalese children learn anything about science, geography, literature, or the arts if they don’t speak French at home and are having difficulty learning a language so different from their own in school?” Molly began to ask everyone she knew. This seemed only to set children up for failure.
These thoughts of development began to occupy a lot of her thinking, and she was always eager to share them with Cheikh Anta. He was not surprised by what she was observing in the field—how a narrow view of education and development, albeit well intentioned, was ultimately proving to be self-defeating.
“As Africans,” he explained one afternoon, leaning across his desk, “the people of Senegal have their own world vision, which is oftentimes quite different from the vision of people who grew up in France, the United States, or the rest of the world. A lot of the differences in vision stem from the simple fact that the goals of an African community—particularly in villages—are, at the most basic level, often very different from European goals.”
Molly agreed. The best way to bring about change was for community members to initiate the programs their villages needed most and to be made to feel proud of their African heritage and language. “True social change—true development—seems possible only when you work with the people,” she thought, “when you start with where they are and, with their input, consider what needs to change.”
Relaying this idea to Cheikh Anta, he nodded his head in understanding. “For what you describe, there is a perfect Wolof word. Do you know what it is?”
Molly didn’t.
“It’s a beautiful word, very important in our language. Literally, the word means the hatching of an egg—the breakthrough moment when the chick emerges from the shell. That chick becomes a hen and lays eggs that it nourishes, and so there are more chicks that become hens and the process continues for generations. For me, the word signifies the idea that as people gain new knowledge in a nurturing environment they can then reach out and share it with others, who in turn do the same. Until African villagers themselves are capable of educating others in a language familiar to all, we will never achieve the type of development that is truly African. This is a word you should never forget.”
Molly was intrigued. “What is the word?” she asked.
Cheikh Anta paused and smiled. “ Tostan.”
7
Maasawu (Empathy)
In July 1975, Molly received an invitation to accompany some Senegalese friends to the Casamance region in southern Senegal. There, they were producing a program for a local television station about circumcision rites for one of the Diola ethnic groups. Molly jumped at the chance, eager for the adventure of it. She’d been told that, during these rites, the young men of various ages preparing to be circumcised were honored with an elaborate celebration and a great feast before being sent off into the forest for over a month as part of their initiation into manhood. Because of hard times and a lack of resources, the ceremony had been postponed for nearly twenty years. Thousands of people from across Senegal, as well as relatives from the diaspora, would convene in one village for the event.
It took an entire day to travel to the Casamance, a region that is Dakar’s topographic opposite. While most of the west of Senegal was a sandy, baked landscape, the Casamance looked as Molly had always thought Africa would: deep, lush woods; orchards of mango trees; troops of monkeys peering out from the trees; and big baboons sitting right in the middle of the road. Thousands of people were there when their car pulled into the village, and hundreds more continued to arrive throughout the day via horse-drawn cart or bus. A large fire roared in the center of the village, and men shot their guns into the air as griots (traditional singers and storytellers) entertained the crowds milling around the grassy field. Cows and sheep were slaughtered and cooked in the mornings; by late afternoon, people were drowsy from the hot afternoon sun and food, their hands sticky with mutton juice. Molly and her friends spent several days in the village, sleeping on mats laid out under the stars and witnessing the celebrations. Through it all, Molly felt as she did so often since she’d arrived in Senegal a year earlier: fortunate to be included in an experience like this, so unusual and unlike anything most outsiders would ever get to witness.
A few days after arriving, as she strolled through the village absorbing the surroundings, the only white person amid the crowd of thousands, she heard music in the distance. Never one to turn down an opportunity to dance, she went to explore, to see if she might join in. But as she got closer, she forgot about the music and instead was captivated by the sight of about twenty teenage girls in the distance. She saw they were dressed in traditional outfits, with beads around their foreheads and their faces painted white. They sat on the ground in a perfect line, each with their legs touching the back of the girl in front of her, like a colorful caterpillar.
Intrigued, Molly approached a woman nearby. “What is this?”
“They’re preparing as well,” the woman said.
“For what?”
“To be cut.”
Molly looked at the woman with confusion.
“The girls will undergo the initiation rites and cutting as well,” she explained.
Molly hadn’t forgotten her experience in Mauritania and the feelings she’d had then, but as she watched the crowd encourage and dance for the girls throughout the afternoon, bestowing them with good wishes, she began to realize that perhaps she’d misunderstood. This was not a secretive rite, but rather a public recognition of the importance of what the girls were about to experience.
Curious to learn more, Molly began to speak to her friends, and then to some of the women of the village who explained that the girls from this particular ethnic group were preparing for their initiation rites. This initiation is a critical event in the life of many African girls, representing the momentous passage from childhood into womanhood. However, over the years, many ethnic groups in Africa had abandoned these initiation rites, though they still maintained the cutting.
There were three parts to initiation: the cutting itself, during which the girls were forbidden to show signs of suffering, in order to prove their courage; then, education on the girls’ new duties as women; and finally, a solemn pledge of silence pertaining to anything they’d undergone or witnessed during the initiation ceremony, in order to preserve the tradition’s sanctity.
The girls would live together throughout the one-month initiation process, away from their families, in a hut specifically built for the occasion. After the cutting, which would take place early in their month together, the girls would be tended to and honored. Women from this and surrounding villages would arrive to wash and treat their wounds. Eventually, the girls would be led out to the fields, where they’d burn their old clothes and receive new ones, symbolizing the new life that awaited them. The women would pray over the girls, for good things to come to them—kind husbands and many healthy children—and then the lessons would commence.
Each girl was taught that as a wife and mother she must be patient, polite, obedient, and ready to serve others. She should not talk too much, and never about family secrets, and she must show honor to her parents and relatives, love her husband, and adore her children. She was taught ways in which to show respect: never looking someone in the eyes when speaking, kneeling when greeting or bringing water, speaking softly, and not talking or laughing too much.
The benefits of initiation were considered to be many. After a girl was cut, she would be guarded by benevolent spirits, and ill fortune would be unable to penetrate her protective curtain of politeness and respect. She would know how to tolerate the behavior of others and manage difficult situations. The initiation the girl received would follow her throughout her life and forge her place in s
ociety. And most important, when it was all done, she would be ready for marriage.
According to Molly’s friend Daouda Ndiaye, a traditional healer and one of the leaders during initiation ceremonies, a common legend shared during certain initiations was the story of the Great Spirit, who came down to speak with the first man and woman on earth. Turning to the woman, the Great Spirit asked what she most desired from life.
“I want to be master, the creator in this world,” she declared.
“So be it,” replied the Great Spirit. “You will be the master, the creator in this world, but you must be willing to pay for the important role you will play. You will know suffering and you do not have the right to complain, for this is the role you have chosen. Complaining will lead to ill fortune for you and your children.” The woman then regretted this choice, but it was too late.
The Great Spirit turned to the man: “What is your desire?”
“I would have been master and creator in this world, but since the woman has already chosen this role, I wish to be master of the woman.”
“So be it,” the Great Spirit told him. “You will be master of the woman.”
According to the myth, this is why women give birth to all the world’s leaders. It is also why they suffer and must do so in silence as a sacrifice to humanity. And because their husbands and fathers are their masters, they must honor and obey them. To do otherwise would risk bringing harm to their families.
A few days later, on the trip back to Dakar, Molly reflected on what she had learned and on one part of the initiation process in particular: the vow of silence. As she understood it, girls who participated in the tradition were prohibited from speaking about it. Doing so would only make them appear weak and bring shame to their families. For the rest of their lives it was their responsibility to hold what happened to them in silence, lest they suffer punishment.