WUNRN
Daily Nation - Kenya
KENYA - FGM MEMORIES HAUNT WOMAN MP* - ADVOCATES AGAINST FGM
Nominated
Member of Parliament Sophia Abdi Noor was barely eight years old when her
mother ‘blessed’ her to undergo the rite of passage that would cleanse her and
make her acceptable for marriage according to tradition. The ordeal she
underwent and the consequences made her launch a campaign against the female
cut.
By CAROLINE WAFULA - April 16, 2011
Never before in the history of the august House had a
member used her life experience to move debate as Ms Sophia Abdi did when
supporting Bill to outlaw female cut
Nominated MP*
Sophia Abdi Noor tends to speak forcefully on most issues she is concerned
about. But when she rose to contribute on the Bill to outlaw female
circumcision in Parliament last week, her voice dropped as the House went
silent.
It was perhaps the
first time an MP was giving a deeply personal story which contributing to
debate.
Female
circumcision, said Sophia, was the cause of a harrowing experience during
menstruation, her first sexual experience, and the eventual childbirth.
This, she said, is
the driving force behind her passionate fight against the practice, which
Parliament now seeks to outlaw with the Bill sponsored by Mt Elgon MP Fred
Kapondi.
She was barely
eight years old when together with seven of her agemates, she was handed over
to a traditional circumciser who took them through the painful process of the
cut. It has been many years since, and she has accomplished so much in life,
but the incident remains fresh in her mind.
The old woman who
took them through the process was going blind, she says, and three of the
eight who underwent the operation died due to excessive bleeding. One of them
was her very close friend.
Luckily for her,
the bleeding was not too much and she had a saviour at hand. Her father, who
was a policeman, took her to a hospital in Garissa using a police Land Rover.
Completely changed
She was in hospital
for a week and underwent a transfusion of four pints of blood. After she left
the hospital, her life completely changed and her mother was also affected as
she felt guilty for ‘blessing’ her daughter to undergo the rite.
The beginning of
her complications was her first menstrual period, which was slow as the opening
of her vagina was small, restricting the flow and her period lasted up to seven
days. This would mean missing classes for the whole period and she would often
lag behind in class.
Sophia does not
remember her wedding day as the happy occasion it usually is for most people.
“It was a night I
literally don’t want to remember,” she said. Her husband was equally affected
due to the frustrations they encountered trying to consummate their union.
It took them three
days before her husband could open up to friends about their frustrations of
being unable to consummate their marriage.
“I was completely
closed and we could not even share with our mothers who kept checking our
bedsheets for blood. They got worried and asked the very young couples of our
age to come and find out what the problem was,” she recalls.
More problems
She was later taken
to hospital for an operation although the eventual consummation was still
difficult because of the wound from the operation.
She would also have
problems later as she gave birth to her first child, a baby boy. She had prolonged
labour for four days and she could not undergo a Caesarean section because the
child had already moved to exit position. The baby had to be removed by a
vacuum, slightly injuring his head.
Ms Noor says it is
this experience of her life that propelled her to launch anti-female
circumcision campaigns.
“So many girls have
died out of this, there is no documentation because this is done in secret, but
this is killing and that is why I am talking about it,” she said.
She said it’s a
very painful psychological experience. with some dying and that “there is no
homestead that has no sad story arising from circumcision,” says Ms Noor.
She explains that
as a child from a pastoralist community, circumcision was a compulsory rite.
“It was not a
matter of consultation, it was even a taboo to talk about i. It was a very
strong belief,” she says.
Everyone believed
it was a religious obligation to undergo the rite, and the conviction was that
a woman who was not circumcised was unclean and not fit for marriage.
It was also
believed that God could not hear prayers of an uncut woman. But the MP does not
blame her mother for the ordeal. She understands too well that like many other
women in her community, she was brought up to believe it was a religious rite.
Going through the
process meant cleansing daughters for marriage. “No one wanted their daughter
to be a ‘haram’ or unfit for marriage,” she explains.
A part from the
belief that circumcising the girl made her clean, it was also believed that the
process protected her virginity.
“Once taken to her
husband, he would know that she had been properly taken care of,” the MP
explains. The third reason for the cut is that the community was scared of
girls who were not circumcised, easily branding them prostitutes.
This is because it
was believed not going through the cut left a woman sensitive sexually hence
could easily turn to prostitution.
In one village
Her campaign
started when, while working on a UNICEF Programme in Garissa where she was
seconded by the Ministry of Education, she came across a circumcision rite in
one of the villages she was visiting.
She immediately
went dizzy after memories of her childhood experience flashed back. She sat
down in silence but just a few minutes later, she and her colleagues heard a
cry from the hut where the rite was being conducted.
The girl had
fainted from the loss of blood but she passed away on the way to hospital. That
incident marked the beginning of her activism against female circumcision. It
was not easy owing to opposition from especially the religious leaders. But she
was not going to give up.
“I knew deeply that
was not my religion,” she says.
With this
conviction, she approached some sheikhs and asked them to go through the Koran to
find out whether indeed the Muslim religion required that women go through it.
It was with much
relief that she came to learn from the sheikhs that it was nowhere in the holy
books of Islam.
“I immediately
mobilised meetings with the community and would later receive support from the
international community,” she says.
She founded
Womankind
The centre
currently has 120 uncircumcised girls, having grown from an initial number of
18. It has girls aged between six and 23.
“People talk of
diseases that come naturally and cause complications and kill, but this one is
a bigger disease by our own making and people just don’t talk about it,” the MP
says, noting that the practice goes on in several other communities in
She is grateful to
her colleagues for passing the Bill that will boost the war on female
circumcision.