Globally, there are many societies still holding on to laws that are implemented abusively towards women. Although advocates of women’s rights generally combat this through persecution, women continue to face discrimination due to traditional beliefs and practices. Every February, since it launched on Valentine’s Day in 2012, the One Billion Rising campaign brings together people from all around the world to rise against the injustices that women and girls continue to face. More so, it sheds light on the detrimental impact of violence against women not only on the social level but on economic, environmental, gender, and health equity. The theme for this year’s campaign is One Billion Rising Revolution.
Let us rise together, let us allow our feet to move to the drums and dance our way to changing the status quo. I am rising to join the Revolution against Female Genital Mutation (FGM).
The Rite of Passage – A fictional short story
“Huntor sukabeh beng? Mamah mung ari. Yalteh me ndara ung…”
(Translation from Fulani: Where are the children? Your grandma is here, come out let me see you)
The singsong voice of my Fulani grandma called out to us as she walked back home from the market. Every morning, Mamah Bwiam, as we fondly called her would wake up before dawn and march to the nearby market where she sold Latchiri (Fulani maize couscous), Kossan (Sour milk) and Deggeh (Peanut butter). By 10am, she was back carrying her empty lekett(s) (Calabash/ Gourds) with her. Years of posture training taught her how to balance a lekett on her head while walking. Zainabou always watched in awe, she had never once heard or seen a lekett fall off Mamah Bwiam’s head. She hoped not, because a broken lekett was a bad omen. Two summers ago, a woman who lived behind the bantaba (equivalent of a gazebo) had dropped hers and from what she heard, the woman had become mentally ill!
Mamah Bwiam was a tiny woman, short and bony. Her skin the color of polished coal was too dark to be considered Fulani. But her hair, fine and curly, like that of her Berber ancestry belied any doubt of her heritage. Although life, early marriage and bearing children in her early teens, had aged her drastically, she still maintained youthfulness about her. By the age of 28, she had been left a widow caring for five of her children and two of her late husband’s other children. Through the throws of poverty and helplessness, she struggled to make ends meet, feed and afford her sons a high school education and her daughters a primary school one. It was perhaps only her eyes, jaded from a painful past that let on that deep inside the youthful demeanor lived an old soul. Now at 50, it was hard to tell, that this beautiful woman with skin as rich as dove chocolate and a smile so radiant had lived through the pain of death, and was now struggling to overcome undiagnosed liver cancer.
“Huntor sukabeh beng? Mamah mung ari. Yalteh me ndara ung… ko haywe? kerreh ko BalaSasa (fabled monster) nangi mung? BalaSasa oooh, BalaSasa oooh… Huntor sukabeh beng?”
(Translation: Where are the children? Your grandma is here, come out let me see you… what is going on? Is BalaSasa (fabled monster) holding you captive? BalaSasa oooh, BalaSasa oooh… where are the children)
As the sound of Mamah’s voice got closer, we all rushed out, each grandchild wanting to help her carry her day’s load. The prize of carrying a lekett meant that you could dip your hands in to the almost empty calabash and scrape out the left over remnants of her ware. Mamah Bwiam would always make sure that there were enough leftovers for all the grandkids so that there was no fighting. She would watch in good humor as my older cousin Khadijatou grabbed the lekett from us, allocating shares of the leftovers. Of course, being the oldest she kept the mammoth share for herself. I wondered when the day would come, that I would be old enough to dish out the leftovers. But, according to Khadijatou, being grown came with a price; a rite of passage that I will need to go through. I had heard of stories, painful and bloody, pricking with needles, ripping, cutting and stitching… It was only years later that I came to understand the implications behind this rite of passage. A ritual practiced for generations in my tribe and passed down for more generations to come. I dreaded the day that this was meant to happen to me.
———–
Every summer, before I packed my bags and left my hometown in Bakau for my family home in Bwiam, I would pray that Nene and Baba (Mother and Father) would find a different solution for my looming initiation. I was afraid. Sometimes I really wondered if my parents knew that my Mamah and the other women planned on hurting me. Did they not love me enough to protect me from such pain? Sometimes I felt like asking them, but I never did because my older cousin Khadijatou had made me swear that I wouldn’t:
Khadijatou: “Zainabou, dung ko hakundeh ma et Allah deh. Sa halli nedor tung hartuff Allah halekeh”
(Translation: This is between you and God. If you tell (spitting sound), God will banish you to hell)
Me: “Hakundeh Allah, su mi halli tung mi faetah, beh naba lang Campama!”
(Translation: I swear to God, if I tell I will go crazy and be taken to Campama)
That day came sooner than I thought. I vividly remember that fateful Friday. I had been in Bwiam for about a week basking in being one with nature and my surroundings. As soon as I woke up, I felt that this day was different. I had an unsettling feeling in my chest; my erratic heartbeat triggered my superstition that something was very wrong. I stalked off in search of my grandma. She always knew the reason why my right or left hand itched, my eyelid twitched or my heart raced.
Perhaps the fact that Mamah Bwiam and the other market women did not go to work as usual should have been a sign that something just wasn’t right. My footsteps faltered as I walked closer to the group of women standing in the middle of the compound. They were singing and chanting tribal songs that were beyond my years. It was hard to recognize my Mamah; her face had been transformed. She no longer looked like the docile dove that would always carry me and hum softly to calm my erratic heartbeat. As I got closer I began to suck on my thumb in fear. Inside the circle formed by the women were my petrified cousins and playmates. Before I could turn and run back to the safety of Mamah Bwiam’s room, one of the women briskly grabbed my arm and pulled me in to the inner circle with the other kids.
We were led to a little hut across the stream, past the “upside down cooking pot”, to an area we were once forbidden. At the door of the tiny but sturdy built hut stood a toothless old woman; I had never seen her before. I looked up at Mamah Bwiam hoping to get her reassuring smile that always made me feel safe. The stony look on her face told me everything I needed to know. It was time. Musukoye the oldest out of us girls was led in first. After 25 minutes of endless screams in mandinka, another girl was led in. The line before me dwindled until it was my turn. I looked at my Mamah Bwiam one more time, my eyes pleading with her. She looked away, refusing to make eye contact, refusing to save me.
The tears fell silently as I walked slowly in to the poorly lit hut. Taking one look back at my past, I lowered my head in defeat as my tiny arms were tugged roughly and my legs held down for my initiation. I had no fight left in me. There was no one left to save me.
From the future, I look back now realizing that perhaps my only crime was being born a girl. As a girl, a part of me yielded so much power that it had to be feared and forcefully taken away. They tried to weaken me, but what they did not know was that they left me stronger. They left parts of me that should be feared, parts that would rise to the beat of the drum and reclaim my power.