Waris Dirie: Overcoming scars of a harrowing FGM ordeal

Waris Dirie is an internationally distinguished supermodel and the former face of Revlon skin care products. She also endorsed Chanel, Levi and L’Oréal brands. In 1987, she played a supporting role in the James Bond film, The Living Daylights.

She had a traumatising genital mutilation experience at age five. She narrated this in an interview with Marie Claire in 1997, the same year she was appointed by the United Nations as a special ambassador for women’s rights in Africa, in its effort to obliterate female genital mutilation (FGM).

In her memoir, Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad, Waris illustrates her indignation towards FGM, a primeval custom introduced to the African continent by ancient Arab slave traders to eradicate female sexual pleasure, and singularly subjugate women's presence to objects of child rearing.

An old woman roamed the north-eastern Somalia desert, circumcising girls. Waris, from a nomadic family of 12, had two older sisters – Halemo and Aman. When the woman went to their camp, Aman was away searching for water, so only Halemo underwent the cut.

Deaths

Waris barely remembered her sister Halemo. She was only three then, and she recalled Halemo being present, then, all of a sudden, didn't exist. She initially failed to comprehend what occurred but later learnt that Halemo had bled to death after the cut.

But Halemo’s was not an isolated case. As they travelled on camels in Somalia, Waris met families and played with their daughters. But when they revisited them, the girls were missing. No one spoke the truth about their absence, or spoke of them at all. They had died from excessive bleeding, shock, infection, or tetanus due to FGM.

FGM-practising communities have been brainwashed to believe parts of the female body need to be detached. The clitoris, labia minora, and most of the labia majora are cut. Then the wound is stitched, leaving a scar. Actual details of the ritual were left a mystery. They were never explained to the girls.

A disingenuous grouchy old friend of Waris' father always travelled with them. When Waris and her younger sister moved near him, he would wave them away as if shooing off flies, while insulting them.

“Get away from me, you two unsanitary dirty little girls. You haven’t even been circumcised yet!” A common behaviour towards uncircumcised girls, intended to emphasise how crucial the tradition was.

The procedure was costly but was considered a premium investment. Without it, girls wouldn't tie the knot and their families wouldn't receive reverse dowry – considered a source of wealth. With their genitals intact, girls were considered ineligible and unclean.

Ordeal

One day, Waris was woken up by her mother. A drowsy five-year-old Waris stumbled along. They walked away from the temporary hut, out into the bush. Girls were awoken so early for the cut so that nobody could hear them scream.

Waris remembers her mother placing the root of a plant between her teeth, to bite and prevent her from screaming. The circumciser fished out a broken razor blade. Waris noticed dry blood on the jagged edge of the blade. The woman spat on it and wiped it against her dress. Her mother then blindfolded her.

She sat immovably, convinced that the more she fidgeted, the longer the torture would be. Her legs began to quiver and shake uncontrollably from the excruciating pain. She lost consciousness. With the female clitoris possessing over 8,000 nerve endings, many girls die after the procedure.

After Waris awoke, the woman sewed her. This was the most agonising part of the violation. The only opening left, a minuscule hole the diameter of a matchstick, was for urine and menstrual blood. She suffered a severe infection.

“My genitals were sealed up like a brick wall so that no man would be able to penetrate, until my wedding night when my husband would either cut me open with a knife or force his way in," she writes.

As she grew older, she reflected on the violation. She was disconsolate after introspection. She could not believe that her own mother, who was supposed to protect her, had been the chief instigator.

At 13, her culpable father tried to force her into early marriage to a 60-year-old man. She followed in her sister Aman's footsteps and escaped to Galcaio, then to Mogadishu, surviving an attempted rape tribulation during the trek.

In her adulthood, she founded the Desert Flower Foundation that funds reconstructive surgery for FGM victims, easing pain, neurosis and restoring sexual pleasure in victims. The foundation rescued a multitude of African girls from FGM.

Jeff Anthony is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother