FGM

Monday was chilly and rainy. It started out with drumming, and then I went to a St. Lawrence class about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). It was really interesting. In Africa, 2 million girls and women per year are affected by FGM in 28 of Africa’s 52 countries. Of the 42 Ethnic groups in Kenya, only four of them do not perform FGM, including the Luo tribe, which my family belongs to. The tribes with the highest percentages of FGM are the Somali (97%), Ambagusii (96%) and Maasai (94%). The presenter said these numbers are underestimates. An average of 33% of Kenyan women have had FGM performed.
Culturally, FGM is extremely important. It is deeply routed in tradition and is a rite of passage for most women. The social pressure is HUGE and many girls are cut before they even know what it means, some even at birth. The main purpose is to reduce the sexual desire of women because women are controlled by emotions and if they were not cut, they would be chasing men around all the time and would enjoy sex and want more of it. There is a Muslim saying “Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts, then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.” This is saying that women were given an unfair amount of pleasure, so they have to reduce that by performing FGM. Another reason for FGM is that men who have many wives need their women to have little sexual desire so they do not sleep with other men while the husband is making his rounds with the other women. Another quotation from a local person was “Women are considered like the property of men, an object that can be used by men. Their sexual enjoyment does not matter and they are not meant to show they’re happy as long as the men are happy.”
The health effects of FGM are pretty horrendous and we saw a lot of slides of women who had had FGM. One slide was of a woman, whose entire vagina had been sewn up, leaving one tiny hole to allow menstrual fluid and urine to pass through. This woman however, was giving birth and the slide showed this baby’s head trying to pass through the tiny hole, which as you can imagine, would be extremely harmful to the woman. It was pretty unpleasant to see. Actually, there is a 20% higher death rate for these babies because of trauma to the head.
FGM is a problem for men too because once they are married, if the man cannot penetrate the woman through this tiny hole, it brings a lot of shame to the man. The woman can even leave him at this point because this means he is not a man. This leads the man to try to force an opening, either by trying to enter her more forcefully or by using his fingers or a knife. FGM is illegal in Kenya, which means that when some people try to get it done more safely and hygienically in a hospital, they are rejected. It reminds me of the issue of needle exchanges in the U.S. It is such a complicated issue because while many westerners and even Africans see FGM as inhumane, many Africans see it as an essential part of life in terms of becoming a woman, and the wonder why foreigners are coming into their cultures to try and stop them from doing it.

Anyway that is my little summary of the presentation. On a lighter note, after this presentation 6 of us went to lunch at this great Ethiopian restaurant. We got three platters of different things and they were all delicious. To make it even better, in total we paid about $15. After lunch Whitney and I had our first kiSwahili lesson. Jina langu ni Sarah. My name is Sarah. Ninatoka Boston. I come from Boston. I like this language a lot. Ninapenda sana kiSwahili!