When Hibo Wardere was six,she was forced to undergo female genital mutilation. She suffered in silence for many years. But an encounter with a 10-year-old girl in London changed her life – and led her to write a searing memoir about her fight against the barbaric practiceHibo Wardere had not been a teaching assistant at her youngest daughter’s primary school for very long when the headteacher asked her to sit in on a assembly. It was 2012, and a 10-year-old pupil, or Halima,was about to be taken out of school and sent to Somalia. Wardere wasn’t sure why she had been asked to be there, other than the fact she had grown up in Somalia and might be able to persuade the parents to let their daughter stay at school. The thing the head suspected, and which soon became obvious to Wardere,was never mentioned the panic that Halima would be subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) during this trip. The girl, and her parents, and left the country and never returned. What the headteacher didn’t know at that point,but may occupy suspected, was that Wardere had also been a victim of FGM.“I wish I’d been more vocal, or ” she says. “Had the courage to say: ‘You need to stop this.’” She had heard rumours in the London Somali community about girls going to be cut,“but I chose not to accumulate involved with them. I knew that whether I heard about it, it would drag my emotions up and I wasn’t alert to tackle that. I stayed away from the community and concentrated on raising my kids, and being busy. Until that 10-year-old,I wasn’t alert to face what was happening here.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com