Becoming a man in Casamance

[sugarimp]

By Rose Skelton
BBC News, Casamance, Senegal

Slashing its sharpened machetes together and letting out a deafening screech, the bark-clad beast known as a konkoran races through the market scattering women and children as they go about their morning shopping.

Comments

[adoka]

The beginning of Senegal's rainy season and the circumcision period, in which boys as young as three will symbolically become men, coincides with the announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that male circumcision could prevent millions of new HIV infections.

This is the part that jumped out at me. Forget researching a vaccine or anything just circumcise everyone. If it works for boys then lets clip the girls too. No need to teach safe sex or health, just take out the rusty knife. Who pays the WHO?

[chiaroscuroman]

From the Circumcision Information and Resource Page:

"Based on the studies published to date, recommending routine circumcision as a prophylactic measure to prevent HIV infection in Africa, or elsewhere, is scientifically unfounded."

[kabuki_no_kaze]

Considering that a significant portion of those circumcised African men are Muslim, with the accompanying sexual mores, may account for at least some of that population's apparent resistance.