When Gambia Banned Female Genital Cutting, a Defiant 96-Year-Old Resisted

There were young girls, sitting nervous and excited in new clothes under the afternoon sun. There were musicians, dancing and plates of food. There were old handmade knives and bright new razor blades.

For the 30 traditional practitioners of female genital cutting, who swayed to somnolent melodies in their matching print dresses, the event was a little like the mass cutting parties that they and their ancestors had held for centuries, in the forests of the tiny West African nation of Gambia.

These women were prominent practitioners in their communities, and cutting girls provided them with an income and respect.

But this party, in 2013 in the town of Wassu, signified the renunciation of their calling. The women carried signs that read: “I have stopped female genital mutilation,” below a drawing of a girl’s tear-stained face. One by one, they stepped forward and swore never to cut a girl again. One by one, they dropped their knives and razor blades down on a red cloth embroidered with cowrie shells.

For these women, it was the end of an ancient, socially important, and to many, horrific practice.

Or was it?

One of the 30 cutters present that day, a grandmother named Yassin Fatty, would over a decade later become the first Gambian cutter ever to be convicted of female genital mutilation.