Killing Mummy (I)
The youngest patient on admission was about 14. Looking at us with a mixture of hope and despair, hope, that once discharged, she could return to whatever would be her new home as a normal ‘woman’ and despair because the husband who put her in the family way had abandoned her at the clinic with […]
The youngest patient on admission was about 14. Looking at us with a mixture of hope and despair, hope, that once discharged, she could return to whatever would be her new home as a normal ‘woman’ and despair because the husband who put her in the family way had abandoned her at the clinic with no intention of taking her back. She would be joining the number of young women who have no home because a barbaric practice of female genital cutting had reduced her to a shadow of her natural self. There were others who shared her plight and behind the smile which signals the regaining of the most natural element of life – urinating would soon be blighted by the thoughts of what happens to them outside the hospital.
I had tried to write a story but then, I was no longer in full journalism practice and I soon perished the idea and within weeks, the initial pain gave way to apathy and as usual, I retired into my shell taking on ‘other pressing issues of national importance.’ What happened is that, FGM remained and I, the supposed conscience of the society, was asleep or busy doing other things. Towards the end of August, a call came through from a friend proposing that I compere a national workshop on the same topic. This one is sponsored by Acquire, another USAID sponsored group with direct mandate to work on fistula care. We haggled as usual over money and I cracked jokes before accepting the task.
Hours through the first session that comes after the opening, I was covering my face in shame at having let down my guard and failed in my responsibility to conscientise my society on a problem which affects 60 per cent of women, some of them so young they are victims of a barbaric tradition that is blighting the future of women.
Thank God for the American vision of ‘meddling’ in the cultural and religious norms of our beloved country, FGM is silently creeping into the topic of discourse. Shamefully, it is taking the Americans to bring to the fore, what a responsible country ought to be discussing and fighting as a national emergency. I have two lovely daughters. I am married to a lovely woman and my late mother was the best anyone could have. On the issue of my mother, she knelt down nine times in her lifetime and is survived by eight products of that task. My mother did not have her genitalia messed up either by cultural dictates or as a rite of passage. I would have been looking for the grave of whoever could have done it to her for righteous desecration.
But across our country, as in other lands, girls as young as five or eight are being held down by men or women, old enough to be their parents while traditional barbers with no proper understanding of the female anatomy sever, not just the most important part of their female organ, but cuts that would rob them of every joy of womanhood. This practice, which, according to experts, date back to the Pharaonic age has been sustained, (like all other barbaric practices); through the ages using the veil of religion and the outworn cloak of cultural practice.
Speaker after speaker at this forum, mostly young medical doctors who carry out the unenviable task of reconstructing the damage done to these women, showed graphic details of four types of cuttings that makes FGM worse than murder. The murderer may subject his victim to a slow painful death, but in most cases, they carry it out within a specific time frame. The female genital mutilator is a tormentor carrying out his/her act with wicked precision leaving a scar which does not manifest until years later when the victim is set for motherhood and is looking forward to enjoying that state.
Unlike the other troubles isolated to one region of the country, while FGM is more prevalent in the northern parts of Nigeria with states such as Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara perhaps worst hit, it has also been significantly noticed in the south-eastern parts of Nigeria. A nation without empirical data plays the ostrich with the fire that may consume its very existence. For, with the so-called rites of passage prevailing almost in every culture in Nigeria, it is certain that most Nigerian girls/women are victims of this harmful practice and that they die unsung – hence the title of this article.