Sister Ginny,

Many many thanks for your points of view, and I hope my friend Cornelius
Edward Hamelberg would take the time to carefully go through them.

But no, Mr. Hamelberg is not a white man; and so thank you for pulling his
ears real hard. All of this ought to have been a race-neutral discussion,
but it is as you said: most Africans I talked to see Nyamko as a probable
conduit of anti-immigrant sentiments; and all progressive minded people,
white or black, need to expose that in concrete terms.

On the other hand, you have succeeded in shaming me into admitting that I
know just as little as you do about FGC. I have been in possession of Ylva
Hernlund's work for the past one year, but have not managed to read beyond a
little of the introduction. I have, though, promised myself that I need to
study it for my own sake. Obviously, it crossed my mind that I would have
been better able to respond to Mr. Hamelberg had I read Ylva's work. Shame
on me.

On the other hand, material I read more than ten year's ago, was a
presentation basically on Aids in the Congo by another social
anthropologist, Kajsa Ekholm Friedman, who lectured at Lund university for
many years. Kajsa Friedman's open racism forced me to read her work
critically. [She associated herself with a white supremacist group here in
the early 90's before disappearing from public view as a result of a moral
campaign waged against her views by her own daughters].

Allow me also to mention in passing, that I became aware of the publicity of
FGC in the West when my friend Absjorn Nordam, sent me cuttings from the
Danish newspaper Politiken, perhaps in 1980 (?) while still living in
Gambia. The then Gambian minister of health, Mrs. Cecilia Cole, at a women's
conference in Copenhagen, admitted openly that "yes, we cut the C in
Gambia", creating a sensation that made headlines the next day.

Otherwise, perhaps it is helpful to say that debates on FGM/FGC have occured
on Gambia-l numerous times in the past, and I think I have maintained some
of my views of seven or eight years ago. I am not sure if our current
archives go that far.

Perhaps someone else can answer your questions. Otherwise you will have to
wait till I finish going through Ylva's work, by which time you would have
finished reading her book...For the moment though, the best you can do is to
try googling around.

Again thank you also for reminding us to exercise moderation in the language
we use on these issues.

Cheers,
sidibeh

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