Wounds that never heal - female circumcision - Windows - Column

Wake up, girl," whispers Granny, as she shakes my shoulder gently. Jolted out of my dream, I dress myself quickly in a lappa skirt and blouse, then Granny and I join three other Fula girls, and their relatives. We leave Freetown, Sierra Leone, by minibus and drive to a remote place in the bush. As the morning mist rises, I see a gathering of women and six or seven other girls. I am 10 years old, and though I not yet know it, the events of this day will forever alter my life.

Bare-breasted dancers shuffling bell-laden feet and shaking maracas sing Temne, Susu and Mandingo songs. They dance around a blazing fire where several kettles boil water for the cooking of pepper soup, corn and rice. Abruptly the singing and dancing stop, and I stand with the other girls in a circle. The women make a ring around us, and the eldest woman enters our circle. "You are about to join Society," she says gravely, "and you must never reveal the ritual that is about to take place. Do you promise to keep these events secret forever?" Solemnly we nod our heads.

Next we are led to a round thatched hut, where we are blindfolded. I feel the women grab me, gag me and lay me down upon a matta. "Be brave," they tell me. "Crying is a disgrace." Suddenly I feel an excruciating pain. My clitoris is sliced off! I try to pull away, but the women hold me. I scream, but no sound comes. Before my silent scream ends, a sharp blade has removed my labia majora and minora. As the women close my wounds with thorns and try to stanch the bleeding with scalding water, I faint from the pain.

I am carried into an adjacent hut where I am washed and dressed in a special Society lappa costume. One by one all the other girls are brought into this large hut. Still in shock, we must now join in the dancing that has erupted again. Strangely, I find that the dancing helps stop my shivering and the chattering of my teeth.

At nightfall our relatives leave us. The girls will sleep on matta in the large hut, our wounds tended by women who are versed in the healing herbs of the forest. We will live in the bush until the wounds heal. I am the last to go because my wounds take the longest to heal.

Upon my return home, I am presented with a new lappa suit and an offer of marriage. I am now a full-fledged member of my tribe and, at the age of 10, a woman ready to leave home to work in the house of her future mother-in-law.

Advocates of female genital mutilation most of them members of a dominant male hierarchy, zealously guard the belief that an uncircumcised woman is unclean, impure and unfit to marry and bear children or attain respect in old age. They charge the increasingly vocal opponents of the practice - many of us living on American soil - with trying to undermine African culture.

Their accusations obscure the appalling truth, a truth my mother, sisters, cousins and female friends understand too well. We have suffered agonizing pain, shock, loss of blood, septicemia and tetanus. Too many of us have quietly bled to death or died later of complications. The rest of us face a lifetime of chronic vaginal and uterine infection, for we no longer possess protective labia to bar the entry of germs. And there are other effects: I will probably never achieve orgasm, but will endure painful intercourse and menstrual agony until menopause. This is the true legacy of female genital mutilation, a barbaric practice that has claimed more than 100 million living victims.

For these victims, help may be possible through reconstructive surgery. Yet when I visited a respected obstetrician who works with mutilated women (Dr. Harry Gordon of Northwick Park Hospital outside London), I felt such horror at the thought of being cut again that I left his office, not sure that I would ever be up to the surgery.

It may be too late for me, but not for future generations of little girls. No longer will I keep the secret of what was done to me in the West African bush. Only by revealing what occurred, and still occurs, at daybreak in the forest can I do my part to heal our wounds.

Poet Mariama L. Barrie of Long Island, New York is active in the international campaign to end female genital mutilation.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group