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Female genital excision
is an ancient rite-of-passage whose origins are lost to time.
Though traditions vary by region, young women between the
ages of 10 to 16 are typically taken out by aunts or respected
elders and subjected to excision of external genitalia (clitoris
and labia) with blades or sharpened obsidian. There are few
sterile procedures and no anaesthesia. Some girls bleed to
death. Many live with fistulas, pain, and physical and psychological
numbing designed to turn them into docile wives and workers.
Yet, this practice is not done to harm girls, but rather in
the deeply held belief that it is necessary to prepare them
for marriage.
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A traditional circumciser confesses, “ I
had said I would stop before, but I failed and
did one or two. I do not have any other income
or children to support me. KMG must help us to
live. I will try and not do it again.”
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A young woman in Hobich-Haka speaks out against
circumcision as other supporters look on. |
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In
Kembatta, the word for this practice is taboo. Never spoken
out loud by its victims, it is simply referred to as “getting
the dirt out.”
It is believed that some 2 million girls a year in Africa
and parts of Asia undergo some form of FGE. In some regions
of Kembatta, according to surveys conducted by KMG, 100%
of girls undergo FGE. Social pressures are strong among
young girls and their mothers who feel it must be done
to make them marriageable. Many feel, wrongly, that it
is mandated by the Bible or the Koran.
FGE has proven an amazingly resilient foe. Over the past
few centuries, attempts have been made to stop the practice
by edict, by threat, and by persuasion. Missionaries once
told communities in Sudan and Kenya that if it didn’t
stop, they would not allow children to attend their schools;
the communities built new schools. British colonial rulers
tried outlawing it; people started circumcising their
girls in the dark, and more girls died so the bans were
revoked. Today, even as KMG makes progress in convincing
traditional circumcisers to stop, we are fighting a new
phenomenon: the “medicalization” of FGE, as
so-called Plastic Bag Doctors roam the countryside with
bags of reusable blades, charging families $5 per girl
and declaring that the problem wasn’t the surgery,
but the surgeons.
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Sisters and honor
students, Abayenesh and Dinknesh Adore, perform
songs they composed against FGE and gender inequality.
In sweet, high-pitched voices they sang, “Let
us not disable the beauty of nature. Excision
destroys love. The Creator does not
like it.”
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Yet, KMG is having
remarkable successes in fighting FGE that are drawing international
attention. KMG founder Bogaletch Gebre, an epidemiologist who
was herself a victim of FGE, started by speaking out for the
first time against the practice in Kembatta in 1997 in the church
she attended as a child, asking, “Do we think we know better
than God what our bodies should look like? Where in the Bible
is it written that we should do this?”
Since then, KMG has carried out a variety of programs designed
to promote reproductive health literacy, educating women and
men about FGE-related dangers that include the transmission
of HIV/AIDS. Some programs feature men as teachers. For remote
areas, KMG sometimes mounts
a VCR on the back of its four-wheel-drive and shows a tape of
an actual female genital mutilation
to audiences that have never before seen a moving picture. Because
FGE is typically carried out secretively and girls are gagged
to muffle their screams, many men have no idea of its severity.
Some faint.
Young girls in Hobich-Haka display
bold placards at a KMG workshop declaring their refusal to be
cut.
At an an Alaba workshop
and elder signifies his resolve to support eradication
of FGE.
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KMG is helping develop
young leaders who are beginning to find their own voices
who will, we are daring to believe, stop FGE in Ethiopia.
KMG Founder Boge Gebre now feels she can identify a
turning point: September 12, 2002, in Hobich-Haka (Forest
of the Lions). Two young people KMG had worked with
decided to get married and organized their own wedding
party with 317 bridesmaids – all the uncut girls
of the village – and hundreds of bridegrooms. The
bride and her bridesmaids wore placards openly announcing
that they planned to remain uncut. The husband, a KMG
Advocacy and Support Committee member, along with his
hundreds of bridegrooms, all pledged to marry uncut
girls.
That wedding, covered by national media in all major
Ethiopian languages, was unprecedented, creating a public
dialogue about this once-taboo subject at a national
level. The question now is how to marshall sufficient
resources in a timely manner and to end once and for
all a rarely discussed practice that has maimed and
killed millions and that continues to be the norm in
Kembatta as well.
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After
her husband’s death, this Alaba widow refused to
marry his brother as traditon dictates. His family threatened
her, and when the police refused to intervene she sought
help at the Sensitization Workshop. The newly-formed para-legal
group established by KMG will undertake her cause as a
test case. |
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W/ro
Desta Bekele tells the audience that she “faked”
the circumcision of her daughters to save them from the
painful experience she underwent as a young girl. “I
know my daughters are going to kill me when I enter the
house, but they have to come to understand that there
is no shame in stopping something as horrible as this,
which kills our children in the name of culture.” |
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