Female genital mutilation: Hope
A group of women in Somaliland are working together with an NGO to eliminate one of the most ancient and extreme practices of female genital mutilation in the world
‘On my wedding night, it felt like having a flame on an open wound,” says the enraged woman with eyes the colour of honey. “He enjoyed it but I experienced the same pain I felt when I was a little girl and they cut open my genitalia with a razor and then sewed it closed with thorns. I couldn’t move for 10 days because my legs were tied together and I couldn’t even go to the bathroom. My memory of it is still bitter and intact.”
Nuura Mahamud Muse (35) sits in a hut on the outskirts of Daami. The mother of six girls talks of the ritual her country practises to sanction female virginity.
“I won’t let my daughters to be touched, though,” she asserts over the noontime call to worship from the muezzins. “I don’t want them to suffer like I do every menstrual cycle, during sexual intercourse, when giving birth. I don’t care if the neighbours badmouth me.”
Daami is situated beyond the Waaheen River shoal in Hargeisa, the windy capital of Somaliland. Located on the Gulf of Aden, Somaliland declared independence in 1991 after the overthrow of Somali military dictator Siad Barre.
But it paid for its freedom: the international community does not recognise this state with its four million inhabitants who are divided into three family clans that, aside from the war, have everything else in common with Somalia: language, pov- erty, and a patriarchal culture that blends Islam with ancient traditions. These include gudniinka fircooniga, the “pharaonic” female genital mutilation or infibulation, a seal of chastity inflicted on girls from the age of five. All the external genitalia are removed, then the vagina is sewn together using needle and thread or thorns of the wild-growing qodax plant, until the tissues from the wound bond, leaving a small hole for urine and menstrual blood to pass through, to be cut open on the wedding night.
According to a 2016 Unicef report, about 200-million women around the world have developed infections, chronic cysts, excruciating menstrual pain, distressing sexual intercourse and complications during childbirth — all in the name of ideals of morality and respectability.
Of the 27 African countries where various types of vaginal amputation are done, the practice is most common in Somalia and Somaliland, and these countries also have the most extreme type: “Ninety-eight percent of our women are infibulated and sewn up again after the birth of each child, resulting in six to 13 stitchings throughout their lives,” says Sadia Abdi, ActionAid’s director in Somaliland, who studied in the United Kingdom and came back to her native Hargeisa to resume the battle she began when she was only 14 years old.
“I saved my younger sister from infibulation,” she says. “My mother kept telling me: ‘You can’t fight against it, it’s part of your identity and womanhood, an Islamic precept’.
“When an imam assured me that there is no trace of this practice in the Koran, I told my mother and she gave in, but placed the honour of the family upon my shoulders. I felt so relieved when my sister found a husband who wanted to marry her for love even though she was different from the others”.
Sadia doesn’t talk about herself. She says infibulation is “an extreme act of violence against women, a concept of male domination that saturates our society and perpetuates gender inequality”. But listening to her, you notice that her tenacity flows from deep within.
“My daughter is five years old and she will remain intact,” she states. “She won’t miss a day of school because her menstrual blood burns with pain; she’ll be able to play and run free from the fear that the stitches could rip open; she will never damn the fact she was born female.”
To underscore how overwhelming social pressure is, Sadia recalls the story of her cousin, who committed suicide because she didn’t undergo infibulation and at school they called her kintirleeyi: an insult for trampy women with a clitoris.
Thanks to Sadia Abdi’s placid stubbornness and ActionAid’s commitment, there are 53 women’s coalitions in Somaliland challenging the greatest taboo.
Hawa Muhumed Madar (65), leader of the women in Agamsaha village, admits to the guilt she feels for having had her daughter infibulated. “Back then, tradition was not put under discussion, but now we are strong, united, and we won’t take it anymore.”
The same revolutionary stance is taken by Maryan and Nymco who