Testimonial of surgical reparation of excision

Abi, a victim, speaks out

Abi Sanon is a Realian pionner who decided to have her clitoris rebuilt as soon as it became available in her country. After experiencing the pleasure to be one again, she decided to let as many women as possible know about this possibility.
Of course she contributed to the information campaign organized by the Raelian Movement of her country, Burkina Faso. But she wanted to do more. Abi is a very shy and humble woman. She decided to overcome her limits and started a very succesful tour. Like her, you can inform and help women to sense pleasure again…
Here is her story of the past few weeks :
It all started in Burkina with large media coverage of the initial press releases about the campaign « Adopt a Clitoris » and « the Pleasure Hospital ». We also printed them on pamphlets and gave thousands out. On May 29th, we held a press conference in front of two televisions, the private and public radios and most of the major newspapers. All of them published the full content of Banemanie’s speech. She talked about the necessity to remove the taboo around the word “clitoris” and explained the importance of that organ for women and the need to rebuild it for those who have been circumcised. She then introduced Clitoraid and its actions through the world to collect funds and help women to find pleasure back.
After this advertisement campaign, the subject became extremely public.
Everyday now we are contacted by sisters who would like to be on our list. Today we have a hundred of them ready to be operated on!
One of our goals was to testify publicly so that we can help others to get operated on. One of the major newspapers did an article where I testified about my experience among other experts explaining the operation and the effects of clitoris circumcision. I must say that among the 50 or so women who have been operated on so far, none of them want to be public as they don’t want to talk about their sexual life. The journalist congratulated the Raelian women for their will to testify.

So, after my testimony, I received lots of encouragements and congratulations from many people including one of my bosses at work. I work for a local development project associated to the “Voluntary Program of the United Nations”. The woman in charge of this program was the one who congratulated me and asked me to share my experience with my colleagues of the United Nations who are working here in Burkina. I accepted with pleasure and on July 28th, we were about thirty at our regular meeting of the United Nations Volunteers. I asked a woman from Social Services to come and explain the problems of clitoris circumcision. She showed a video of a little girl being circumcised next to a market, in front of everybody, in Nigeria. No need to say that everyone was quite attentive. Then I talked about the right of women to have pleasure as well since men can marry up to four women if they aren’t satisfied while women have no right to pleasure! A the end of my talk, everyone applauded and I received lots of encouragement and congratulations from everyone, especially from my boss who cried so much watching these unbearable images. Many said that they had no clue of the dimension of the problem until then but now that they are aware, they cannot stay inactive. One of the participants said that he was in favor of clitoris circumcision before but he has now changed his mind. The meeting was supposed to last 45 minutes, we stayed together for two hours!

After these actions in Burkina, I had the privilege to go on with this adventure with my Guide Banemanie. We went to Cotonou, Benin. We have been interviewed there for almost 2 hours by a journalist from a television.

The following days we went to Togo where we got interviewed as well by the biggest newspaper « TOGO- PRESSE ». An article was published on August 10th under the title: “ Rehabilitation of circumcised women, two victims testify”.

Back to Burkina, after a few days rest, I decided to go to Mali with X-Ciel, the National Guide, in this Islamic country where clitoris circumcision is practiced a lot and extremely taboo. Anxious to bring the good news about the possibility to rebuild clitorises we went the day after our arrival to the headquarter of the official Radio and Television of Mali where we found ourselves asked to go to the Office of the National Program against the practice of Excision. On Friday morning, we managed to get in touch with the President of an association of doctors who are fighting against female circumcision. Her contact information was given to me by my boss at the UN program. The doctor named Dr Aïchata Diarra Sacko is quite involved in programs to help women and young girls to blossom. I introduced the Clitoraid program to her and was quite surprised to see her emotion. This intelligent and dedicated woman couldn’t hold her tears. She thought I was coming to ask for a grant of some kind, she wasn’t expecting this…She said : “ Forgive me, I am so touched by your testimony, I m so proud of you dear Abi, you are a brave woman. I can assure you that I will make sure that the doors of Mali are always open for you.” She then took me right away to a seminar where several leaders of National and International Organizations for the promotion of woman and young girls were gathered. She was really touched by the fact that I left my country on my own budget, only to communicate this important information to my sisters of Mali. She said that many women visited her to find out where to do this operation and she could only tell them to go to France while she could have told them to go to the neighboring country! She immediately contacted some people who are involved in the fight against circumcision who came to her office to hear my testimony again and they were all so touched as well. She wanted to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of what is possible so that they can act afterwards. They decided during this meeting to do a sister association to the « Women of Heart » association founded by Banemanie and they are now making a list of women who want to have their clitoris restored by Clitoraid…
Dr Aïchata Diarra Sacko also invited me to participate to a national meeting at the end of November in Mali about the female conditions where she wants me to testify.