This story is an inspiring memoir from a courageous young African woman. She was forced to flee her home country in The Gambia after being raped at the age of eighteen by the country’s dictator. She became the first woman to publicly call the country’s dictator to account for sexual assault and in the process, launched a protest movement in West Africa.
In 2015, Toufah Jallow won the presidential competition designed to identify and support the country’s smart young women with a scholarship to study wherever they wanted. However, winning the competition brought her to the attention of Yahya Jammeh, the country’s dictator. He pretended to be fatherly and gave gifts to her and her family. Then he proposed marriage. Toufah refused so he drugged and raped her.
She couldn’t tell anyone what happened. She felt guilty. So she planned a nerve-wracking escape to Sénégal and with help, hid in Dakar waiting for a country to accept her. She wasn’t safe in Sénégal. Jammeh was looking for her. The situation was tense. Then the International Organisation of Migration found a country willing to accept her. She was going to Canada where she would be safe. The Immigration Officer unrolled a map of Canada and asked her where she wanted to go. She knew nothing about Canada. The tension broke and I laughed and cried at the same time. Compare the size of Canada to The Gambia and you will understand.
Interestingly, there is no word for rape in Wolof, Fulani and Mandinka, three indigenous languages spoken in The Gambia. “When you do not have a word to describe a thing, to make it a crime, a reality,” speaking out makes a difference even in the absence of precise words. And that’s what Toufah did.
A few years later, she contacted Human Rights Watch and was helped to go public giving press conferences. She organised a women’s rights march, the first march of its kind in The Gambia. Women could make themselves heard; they could teach women and girls about women’s rights and autonomy, in other words, the right to control their own bodies. They marched wearing white T-shirts with “#IamToufah” on the front and carried signs declaring “No Means No”, “Our silence is their protection. Speak Up”, “No to Sexual Violence”, “Rape Destroys Human Dignity”, “No Woman Deserves Rape”.
And she established
the Toufah Foundation to help victims of VAW and IPV.
