In Somaliland, a deeply conservative state where more than a third of households live in poverty, an estimated 98% of girls endure FGM.
Hamda, a 30-year-old mother of two, speaks at seminars and workshops about the health risks of FGM, such as infections, abnormal periods and obstructed labour.
‘When a girl has her period it won’t come out properly – there will only be drops,’ says Hamda, who was cut at the age of nine. ‘When she is married the wedding night will be so, so painful … When she has a baby she will suffer again’
Any mother considering sparing her daughter the pain of FGM fears condemning her to a lifetime of isolation.
‘There was a man who found out his wife was open [uncut] on his wedding night,’ says Fatima, 50, a grandmother who moved from a village to the capital, Hargeisa. ‘The next day he sent his wife back to her parents and cut a hole in the mattress to indicate the insult he had suffered’
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Fouzia was seven when she was cut. ‘As soon as I saw [the cutter] coming, the pain started,’ says the 16-year-old. ‘I thought about escaping, but I couldn’t. So I said to myself, ‘You will not die, so just bear it.’’
She suffered the most severe form of FGM, which entails slicing off the inner and outer labia and stitching up the vulva, leaving only a tiny opening for urine and menstrual blood.
‘It was the worst pain I had ever felt,’ she says
Nimah, five, with her mother, Amina, near their home in westernSomaliland. Amina plans to have Nimah cut next year. Although she will opt for a less severe form of FGM called sunnah, it still involves cutting the clitoris.‘This is our culture,’ she says. ‘I can’t stop it’
Fatima, 20, is a university student studying nutrition in Hargeisa. She says that she finds the most severe form of FGM barbaric, but if she had a daughter, she would still have her cut in some form.‘A girl who has not been circumcised will be called a buuryogab. It’s an insult,’ she says. ‘Maybe by the time I have granddaughters, they won’t need to be cut’
Thorns used in the traditional FGM ceremony. Worldwide, more than 100 million women are estimated to have undergone some form of FGM. Yet in many cultures simply talking about FGM is taboo. Against this backdrop, education programmes highlighting the risks of FGM could save lives._________________________________________
Himaya Quasem, for ActionAid
