Waris Dirie- testimony

The Waris Dirie story


International super model and spokes person for the U.N, this Somalian born woman was circumcised at a very young age and describes in great detail the horrific scene-

"Mama positioned me on the rock. The gypsy woman reached inside with her long fingers and fished out a broken razor blade. I saw dried blood on the jagged edge. She spit on it and wiped it on her dress. The next thing I felt was my flesh being cut away. I heard the blade sawing back and forth through my skin. The feeling was indescribable. I didn't move, telling myself the more I did, the longer the torture would take. Unfortunately, my legs began to quiver and shake uncontrollably of their own accord, and I prayed, Please, God, let it be over quickly. Soon it was, because I passed out.
When I woke up, my blindfold was off and I saw the gypsy woman had piled a stack of thorns from an acacia tree next to her. She used these to puncture holes in my skin, then poked a strong white thread through the holes to sew me up. My legs were completely numb, but the pain between them was so intense that I wished I would die.
My memory ends at that instant, until I opened my eyes and the woman was gone. My legs had been tied together with strips of cloth binding me from my ankles to my hips so I couldn't move. I turned my head toward the rock; it was drenched with blood as if an animal had been slaughtered there. Pieces of my flesh lay on top, drying in the sun."


After her circumcision
• Her dad arranged a marriage- she ran away to Mogadishu where her sister lived.
• She moved to London with her aunt who was married to the ambasador of Samali, worked in their house but never returned after the visa expired.
• She was asked to be photographed and soon appeared in Revlon commercials with Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Lauren Hutton.
• Her career was at its best although she carried the pain of her past.
• The tiny hole left, only permitted urine to escape one drop at a time.
• She never told doctors she had been circumcised but it got to a point where she had no choice.
• She was operated on much to the disgust of her family in Somalia.
• She became a UN actovate for the abolishment of FGM

Its still happening - a lot

Here's a few stats so you can get the gist of how often this procedure occurs, and where its most popular. We've also included some info on the changes and generational trends of FGM.

• Its estimated more than 130 million women and girls have undergone FGM, primarily in Africa and in some Middle Eastern countries.

• It is generally practiced on girls between 4-14. Also known to be practiced on infants, women who are about to be married, pregnant women or women who have had their first-born.

• Up to 3 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt and Sudan are at risk of FGM annually

• North-East Africa prevalence varies from 97% in Egypt to 80% in Ethiopia

• Western Africa prevalence varies from 99% in Guinea; 71% in Mauritania; 17% in Benin; and 5% in Nigeria

Generational Trends:

• The differences between the percentage of women aged 15 – 49 who have undergone FGM and the percentage of women aged 15 – 49 with at least one daughter circumcised indicates a change in prevalence of FGM

• In Egypt and Guinea almost all women have undergone FGM – only about half of those women have indicated that their daughters have experienced FGM

All of this information indicates a generational trend towards ending the practice - hopefully! Leave some comments if you can, we really want all of your opinions on this practice

week 8

Daisy and i have prepared our interview questions for both our interviewees.

We're interviewing Mike Minehan on Thursday.
Over the weekend I'm interviewing my friend and her parents who went to Kenya
last year and came across a village with girls that had refused FGM and ran away to this village.
Her mom is a psychologist and her dad a doctor and she (my friend) did aid work in Uganda,
so we thought they'd have alot of opinions on the mental and physical damages a girl
goes through after having it done.

Daisy is currently researching Somalian political conditions because we were told that there hasn't
been an adequate functioning government there for some time. So we're wondering since FGM is against the law,
that its probably impacted the prevalence rates in Somalia.

This week we'll post a bog on it.
Please tell us your opinions

What's your opinion

A New Debate on Female Circumcision

"Dr. Shweder says that many Westerners trying to impose a “zero tolerance” policy don’t realize that these initiation rites are generally controlled not by men but by women who believe it is a cosmetic procedure with aesthetic benefits."

Visually pleasing? We agree that it is done by women but it is only "visually pleasing" to men. Only men will consider them more pure and more likely to be chosen for marriage by a man. Female circumcision is run by a patriarchal society and therefore controlled by men

"He criticizes Americans and Europeans for outlawing it at the same they endorse their own forms of genital modification, like the circumcision of boys or the cosmetic surgery for women called vaginal rejuvenation."

These procedures are done in sterile conditions with trained doctors and women CHOOSE to have this done and the boys getting circumcised have no future painful intercourse, painful urination or even more painful childbearing and birth complications.

What's your opinion?

Female genital mutilation

Week 7

We're trying to get our blog linked to as many sites as we can, so this week we've emailed Amnesty International, Unicef, and World Vision to see if we can feed our blog into their sites and vice versa. So now we're just waiting on replies.

We've also started to organise our interviews. We'll be interviewing a doctor, psychologist and their daughter who travelled to Kenya and worked in a village with girls who had run away from home in order to escape the ritual. We'll also be interviewing an expert from Liverpool hospital who has dealt with victims of FGM. We'll also interview one of our uni lecturers with some viable opinions on the issue. We'll also interview a woman who has worked in a hospital in Ethiopia with fistula patients. Hopefully we'll get these interviews in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

We've posted an article this week too, so comment!

What we plan to do

Over the next 7 weeks, we plan to do the following the things...

• Do weekly posts on what we have done and what we plan to do next and another post on a reply to a related article.
• Find 3 different people to interview who are experts or have been effected by FGM.
• Design interview questions for each interviewee. 
• Find blogs which link to our blog and its topics.