In this post, I lend my pen to Kadidia, Malian and victim of excision. She looks back on her past. A past that ruins his married life every day. Her story and her suffering led her to get involved in the fight against female genital mutilation.
“I am in my thirties and come from a conservative family. L’excision is a tradition with us, the Bamana ethnic group in Mali. If a girl is not circumcised, she becomes the laughingstock of the village. People go so far as to call her “Bilakoro-woman”, a way of saying that she is not an accomplished woman. Thus, the girls of our tribe, in the region of Ségou, undergo excision, in its most serious form: infibulation, that is to say the total cutting of the lips.
The practice is done without any hygiene, without care, without anesthesia, with a single knife on all the girls.
I was eight years old
I remember the day my grandmother took me to the circumciser. I was eight years old whereas girls back home are usually circumcised at the age of two or three. Living in town with my aunt temporarily protected me.
It was when I came to spend the holidays in the village that I experienced it. That day, my grandmother woke me up early to accompany her to the village old woman. Once arrived at the old woman’s, I could see that I was the oldest among the girls present at the place. Behind a hut, the women took the little girls away one after the other. I was worried, I heard screams. When my grandmother took me in turn, I suddenly saw myself in their hands. They held my two arms and my two legs to the ground to immobilize me, with the help of another person who held my head so that I did not move too much. I felt that I was being cut down, that a part of me was being taken away. I cried out in pain, I bathed in my flowing blood. I then had a lot of trouble getting up to walk.
Once the work was done on my genitals, the old woman gave a black powder to apply to the injured part. After a few hours of severe pain and crying, my grandmother and I returned home. I spent the following days with my grandmother, I was bleeding. And all she found to say to me:Be strong! You have now become a pure woman”.
Years after my circumcision, I began to suffer during my period and contracted a serious infection.
I went to gynecological consultations. This situation sickened me: I was the only child of my parents to have the chance to go to the big city to study. Alas! The consequences of the excision on me were the cause of the abandonment of my studies, whereas I dreamed of being a student. It was a new traumatic experience.
wedding room
On my wedding day, I understood that I was faced with a situation that until now I was unaware of. In the wedding chamber, I couldn’t have the first sexual intercourse with my husband. Difficult for another person to understand my pain. I have pain in intimacy with my husband that I can’t satisfy in bed. After eight years of marriage, I can’t manage to give her a child.
Because of the excision, I have not been able to consummate my marriage until today when I tell you this confidence. Despite so many gynecological and therapeutic treatments, it turns out that I will not be able to give birth because I suffer fromendometriosisan “infection of the uterus”.
Cry of heart
It’s time to end the practice of female circumcision. To date, no benefit has been declared on the health side, on the contrary, this practice creates serious physical complications and psychological suffering on women. The benefit (if we can call it that…) is only societal, excision does not respond to a health requirement but to a requirement of the community and society. The first of the consequences of excision is haemorrhage.
I want to call for the vote and enforcement ofa law prohibiting this practice for the respect of human rights. I would like Mali to put in place a national policy to fight against all harmful and unnecessary traditional practices. It is estimated that 91% of Malian women aged 15 to 49 are victims of excision (according to the demographic and health survey in Mali carried out in 2013).
To those who practice it, let them know that they threaten human life and that excision can cause infertility in women.