Desert Flower (IS home)
Read more about Waris Dirie: http://www.fgmnetwork.org/intro/index.html
Listening Workshop
Listen to Waris (here) (for easy version being read click here) and answer the questions below. Later, you can check the transcript near the bottom of this page.
1. What’s the only thing girls know when they have the operation?
2. What percentage of Somali girls are forced to have this unneccessary operation?
3. How many countries practice FGM?
4. How many girls are at risk every day?
5. How does Waris feel about discussing it?
6. Does Waris blame her mother?
7. Is FGM related to religion
8. How does Waris feel women are treated?
c) Taboos Discussion: Discuss, write or think about the questions below.
1. Waris broke a taboo by discussing this issue. She wants to make this issue well known. Is that a good idea? How can the problem of FGM be solved?
2. Discuss two other taboo topics. Why are they taboo?
Homosexuality
AIDS (take the AIDS facts quiz)
Chapter Three: Desert Flower (p. 24)
Host: In 1997 Somali supermodel Waris Dirie decided to speak out against FGM.
1. Waris: ...the only thing you know is this like this shocking horrible pain, you know? There’s no way I can try and describe it to you that feeling.
2. Host: Over 90 percent of Somali girl children are genitally mutilated, without anesthetic, usually between 5 and 6 years old.
3. Female Genital Mutilation or FGM happens in 28 countries.
4. 6000 girls a day are at risk. Many bleed to death. Others die later from infections and related causes.
Host: Local doctors estimate that here at least one in five women die from FGM and related causes.
Aid Worker: There are many health hazards which are not even known about, for example the effect on pregnancy and childbirth and the complications that might arise from that.
5. Waris: It’s not a really easy thing to talk about. It’s very personal and it’s very painful.
Host: 2 years ago Waris returned to see her mother for the first time since she left Somalia at the age of 13.
6. I never blame my mother. I know it wasn’t her fault. It was out of her control you know, there was nothing she could do about it. Women have no power over it at all. It’s the men. I mean it happened to her you know, it happened to her mother.
7. And it has nothing to do with religion. It’s not in the Koran it’s not in the b...in anywhere. It’s a man-made rule, that’s all it is.
Amin, Amin Amin. This Somali family is celebrating a marriage. The wedding was 6 days ago and the bride has been suffering ever since. The wedding night was the worst. And I keep fainting and having dizzy fits. I’ve lost so much blood I’ve become anemic.
8. Women are treated like a cattle you know, like animals. We have to fight to stop this. Everyone must be aware of the whole issue...it’s got to be kept it in the newspapers, it’s got to be speak about it, talk about it, anywhere and everywhere you can.
These little Somali girls are being taught a song which calls for an end to FGM. It’s part of a new campaign. But for most of these children it’s already too late.
I’m gonna fight this, against this, this problem until the day I die.