What about abortion and death penalty/execution? God, help us with the selective choice of words, some of us have been conned to use, even against our selves...Female Genital MUTILATION..what? What do we call male circumcision? Male Genital Decapitation. Are you guys aware of the Movement to banned Male circumcision? It's sad that some of us, instead of reasoning with our brethren that practice this form culture, tradition, religion or whatever one wants to call it, we decided on the reversal role of blaming ourselves as uncivilized, barbaric, inhumane and all the crap nonsense. My question to you, if the cap fits, where the hell on earth were you the past two decades, when more females were circumcised than currently exaggerated by these no-good Liberators/Westerners knows best. Do you JJC's suffer from selective myopia or amnesia on this issue, even though you were born and raised in the Gambia? We have to start reading between the lines when these so called saviors come knocking on our doors, on the pretext of salvaging/educating/civilizing us from our traditional/cultural practices, as seen from their own perspective. In the eyes of many foreigner's to Africa and Africans, it's only recently, that we, Africans, became 'civilized' instead of the usual negative/subliminal connotations attributed to, and believe by some of us Africans [backward, savages, cannibals]. This changed as we, Africans started leveling the plain field, by learning, mastering, competing them in their art, craft and science of myth-making and reality. The solution is, either we collectively educate/empower [as Hamadi did] the families and or practitioners of female circumcision, or shut up and stop being forceful hypocrites. A friend of mine recently send her daughter home, after a lot of debate on "culture clash" vis a vis, the husband Wollof and wife Mandingoe; to circumcised or not to [as the grandmother wished]. Upon seeing the granddaughter the first time in her life, the grandmother accepted the reality that the fifteen year old girl's mode of thinking and understanding, is that of a competitor and focused determinant on being a doctor someday, the grandmother turned out to be more supportive of the child's education and well being, infact threatened a neighbor, for mentioning circumcision to her granddaughter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------