At present, excision is generally performed when a girl is about four and the initiation rite into the secret society is ideally carried out at puberty. Some decades ago, excision was performed at puberty, in direct connection with the initiation ritual. People told me the wound heals better on little girls and they therefore circumcise at a younger age nowaday (cf. Skramstad 1990). The initiation ritual is elaborate, time consuming, and costly, gathering family and friends from all over Senegal. It is an occasion that girls look forward to with fervour.
In addition to religion, excision is connected to ‘knowledge’ (cf. Johnson 2000). An excised girl knows something a non-excised girl does not, no matter her age. The circumcision ritual is a socialisation process and an important education for girls. This knowledge—a practical, theoretical, and corporeally ‘magical’ knowledge—can only be transferred from older women to girls through the excision ceremony and the subsequent initiation ritual. The uncircumcised girl or woman is called solima, which is Mandinka and means not only ‘uncircumcised’ but also ‘the one who knows nothing’, ‘rude’, ‘ignorant’, ‘immature’, ‘uncivilised’, and ‘unclean’ (cf. Hernlund 2000; Johnson 2000).[67] The word is strongly judgemental and is commonly used to insult girls with bad manners, excised or not. However, an un circumcised woman is considered solima no matter her social behaviour. With few exceptions, all women in the village are initiated and form a sort of secret society, an association through which much of women’s social and religious life is organised. An uninitiated woman is not allowed to participate in the ritual activities of this female society and is socially excluded in many respects.