‘Sometimes they play the drums while they wait while their daughter was being circumcised so one not should hear the girls crying and screaming,' Yo Fane told MailOnline, wistfully.
The result of beliefs like this is that the arrival of a woman like Yo Fane - the cutter - to a village was a cause for celebration.Ī cow would be slaugthered - Yo Fane always got some of the meat - and 30 unsuspecting girls would queue outside with their parents and grandparents, clutching a lemon while they waited for their turn. My sister, for example is not circumcised, and she wants sex all the time.' ‘It's not good if you are not circumcised as a woman, because then you want more sex than the man wants. While Yo Fane wistfully speaks of the days when she could openly practice her 'craft', Mariam has taken it upon herself to campaign against the painful and sometimes deadly tradition. Yo Fane and Mariam are on opposite sides of the fight against female genital mutilation in Mali, a country where almost 90 per cent of girls and women have been circumcised. If the mouse has eaten it, it means that the girl will have many children because the mouse itself gets many children.' The day after they look if the mouse has eaten it. ‘They take the clitoris home and put it in a mouse hole. ‘When I had cut the top of the clitoris I packed it into a piece of paper and gave it to the parents so that they could take it home with them. Yo Fane added: ‘I only practice a mild form of circumcision because I only cut the foreskin or tip of the clitoris, and I give the parents it to take it with them home,' she said. Then I put some secret homemade magic powder on the wound where the clitoris was so it can heal quickly.’ ‘The girls always begin to cry and automatically clap their thighs together. And I'm ready with the knife to quickly chop the top of the clitoris. So I get them to spread their legs and quickly spot where I need to address and cut. ‘First I play around a bit with the girl to win her trust. Indeed, I am fast and have a little trick,’ the 60-year-old explained. ‘I was the leading circumciser, and not only here in Mali, because parents also requested me from even other countries, where I traveled to and circumcised their girls. This is Yo Fane, who boasts of having been Mali's most sought after practitioner of female genital mutilation (FGM), able to 'chop' 200 girls a month - for a fee.