FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION – MY STORY-PART 1

Kezia Bianca
By Kezia Bianca- YWCA of Kenya

My name is Keziah Bianca, I am 22 years old and work at the YWCA of Kenya – Kisii branch. Kisii is a place renowned for practicing female genital mutilation and as a girl who grew up here, I was not an exception. I cannot blame my family for making me go through this inhuman act, as the society dictates it. In my culture it was considered unclean for a girl not to go through the practice.

The reason why I am writing this is to say to the girls who faced female genital mutilation like me, to still trust in life and a brighter future. It doesn’t matter what happened, or how your past has been, you can still have a future if you stand up and let your voice be heard. Talk about how you feel and also protect the young girls who may be facing the wrath of the knife as you and I did.

Allow me to take you through my personal experiences of Female genital mutilation (FGM) as I am a survivor of a clitoridectomy.

My community practices FGM type one which is partial or total removal of the clitoris, because they believe that the clitoris is unclean as it makes one sexually active. I strongly oppose this and believe that refraining from sexual relations before marriage is all about one’s attitude and values and it does not have anything to do with the removal of the clitoris.

I remember 7 years ago as if it was yesterday. The scar still remains fresh in me. I really didn’t want to go through FGM, but because in my village all the girls of my age set had gone through it, I didn’t have any option but to follow the community traditions and it’s the community that dictates, not you. It was on the 7^th December 1997 when all this happened to me. It was 5 in the morning when I heard some women talking outside our house. I didn’t know that they had come for me, to create a scar of a lifetime. Innocently like a sheep to be taken to a slaughter house, one woman came and told me that I should wake up as it was my day to become a woman. I didn’t believe my ears but because she insisted, I woke up. I felt some kind of fear and felt like my whole body had frozen. She took me outside where women were singing songs and ululating. By that time my mother was nowhere to be seen, at least to see the state I was in and to help me. All I wanted at that particular point was to see her so that she could see the pain in my eyes and tell them to let me be. But I think she could not have helped me because she thought that it was a rite of passage that I should go through.

According to my community during this fateful day, your mother is not supposed to be present as they believe you will cry and call her for help and as a woman who bears the pain of giving birth, a mother can’t stand to see the pain that you are going through. Together with me in that group there was my friend, I could see in her eyes too the fear she had but we could not help each other as we were so young and were not given a chance to say NO. They sang songs while taking us behind our house and we were made to sit on a very cold stone. Because of the fear, I refused to be the first to sit so I stood there staring at the stone, and it was such a cold morning. My friend was made to sit first and I watched her go through the cut and this is one thing that is still fresh in my mind. Then after my friend it was my turn, they took a piece of cloth, tied it around my eyes and held my head back and then they gave me another piece which they put in my mouth so that I could bite it during the whole process to ease the pain. Two women held my legs and hands so tight that I could not move. Still from the background I could hear the women singing and I felt that they were celebrating my pain, but the real reason for the songs was to diffuse the cries so that nobody can hear me crying. Then I felt a very sharp pain between my legs. This was a turning point in my life.

...to be continued tomorrow