PUNCH
When he was a witch doctor, Moussa Diallo would regularly smear himself in a lotion made from a clitoris cut from a girl subjected to female genital mutilation.
“I wanted to be a big chief, I wanted to dominate,” said the small but charismatic fifty something from northwest Ivory Coast.
“I put it on my face and body” every three months or so “for about three years”, said Diallo, who asked AFP not to use his real name.
Genitalia cut from girls in illegal “circumcision” ceremonies is used in several regions of the West African country to “make love potions” or magic ointments that some believe will help them “make money or reach high political office”, said Labe Gneble, head of the National Organisation for Women, Children and the Family.
A ground-down clitoris can sell for up to around $170 (152 euros), the equivalent of what many in Ivory Coast earn in a month.
Diallo stopped using the functions a decade ago, but regional police chief Lieutenant N’Guessan Yosso confirmed to AFP that dried clitorises are still “very sought after for mystical practices”.
And it is clear from extensive interviews AFP conducted with former faith healers, circumcisers, social workers, researchers and NGOs, that there is a thriving traffic in female genitalia for the powers they supposedly impart.
Many are convinced the trade is hampering the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM), which has been banned in the religiously diverse nation for more than a quarter of a century.
Despite that, one in five Ivorian women are still being cut, according to the OECD, with one in two being mutilated in parts of the north.
On Wednesday, Ivory Coast’s Ministry of the Family, women and children told AFP that “no official file of the gendarmerie or the national police has been opened in Ivory Coast on alleged trafficking of excised organs.”
The ministry insisted there was “no tangible proof of a market for the sale of excised clitorises,” adding the country has set up an “early warning system as well as a network of 1,673 community leaders to prevent and eradicate FGM.”
– Cut and mixed with plants –
Before he had a crisis of conscience and decided to campaign against FGM, Diallo said he was often asked by the women who performed excisions around the small town of Touba to use his powers to protect them from evil spells.
Female circumcision has been practised by different religions in West Africa for centuries, with most girls cut between childhood and adolescence. Many families consider it a rite of passage or a way to control and repress female sexuality, according to the UN Children’s agency UNICEF, which condemns cutting as a dangerous violation of girls’ fundamental rights.
Beyond the physical and psychological pain, cutting can be fatal and lead to sterility, birth complications, chronic infections and bleeding, not to mention the loss of sexual pleasure.
Diallo would often accompany the women who do the cutting out into the forest or to a home where dozens of girls would be circumcised, often surrounded by fetishes and sacred objects. So it was relatively easy for the former faith healer to obtain the precious powder.
“When they would cut the clitorises they would dry them for a month or two then pound them with stones,” he said.
The result was a “black powder” which was then sometimes mixed with “leaves, roots and bark” or shea butter that is often used in cosmetics.
They could then sell it for around “100,000 CFA Francs (152 euros) if the girl was a virgin” or “65,000 (99 euros) if she already had a child” or barter it for goods and services, Diallo added.
The ex-witch doctor said he was able to get some of the powder recently — a mix of human flesh and plants, he believes — from a cutter in his village.
AFP was shown the powder but was unable to analyse it without buying it.
– ‘Organ trafficking’ –
Former circumcisers interviewed by AFP insisted that clitorises cut from girls are either buried, thrown into a river or given to the parents, depending on local custom.
But one in the west of the country admitted some end up being used for magic.
“Some people pretend they are the girls’ parents and go off with the clitoris,” she said.
Witch doctors use them for “incantations” and sell them afterwards, she claimed.
