Travelling to Somaliland in North West Somalia, is another painfully early start. You may have guessed it already, but I am not a morning person. It’s a 5.30am check in for the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS). The flight took about 5 hours. UNHAS offers a genuine no-frills service, with not even the option of purchasing food, so by the time I reached Hargeisa I was starving.
On paying the $22 on arrival for visa and airport security tax, I am handed my change in Somaliland shillings. A dollar equates to 6,500 shillings and the standard bill is 500, so I can barely close my wallet now.
Waiting for Godot
I head outside to look for my pick-up, but the driver is nowhere to be seen. It’s a baking 36 degrees so I settle under the shade of a tree and chat with some old Somali men, while I wait for
Godot. When they hear that I am from Ireland, they tell me that “Ireland is the Somalia of Europe”. This is not the first time I have heard this, but I am still a bit mystified by that statement.
Female Genital Mutilation
The reason for my trip is an evaluation of an Irish Government funded Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting eradication project. We met with a group of women who used to carry out Female Genital Mutilation on girls, but have since publicly announced that they have completely
stopped practising.
They had each cut hundreds of girls in their careers, but since learning from the World Vision project that it is not a religious requirement and that it does major damage, they made a public announcement that they would abandon the practise. They told me how they really regretted what they had done and would never go back to it, even though it meant a significant drop in their income.
“The girls are so happy now. They used to fear being circumcised so much that before the season started they’d be crying. Now when the circumcising season begins they all go out together and play.”
Why do they do it?
Which begs the question- if your daughters are terrified and it hurts them so much, why would you do this to them?
I’m not making apologies for this practice, but people aren’t doing it to be cruel. Most of the community genuinely believed FGM is a religious requirement and that women can not pray or marry without undergoing it. They would be stigmatised and ridiculed. Many would rather go through the pain than be a social outcast. Life is tough enough out here and there is nowhere for an outcast woman to turn to. There are no safety nets or social welfare.
But attitudes towards FGM are gradually changing. World Vision has been working closely with religious leaders to highlight that the Prophet Mohammed never practised FGM on his daughters and that it goes Against core Islamic principles and gradually we are seeing a change.
There are still people in the community that practice FGM on their daughters, but from all I heard today the numbers are reducing.
What a relief.
