Anne Bitsch

In Tanzania, women activists slowly but surely are making progress in the battle against female genital mutilation, a traditional practice that today affects more than 140 million women around the world.

- The pain was indescribable. My mother pulled my legs apart and my grandmother held me from behind. Then the «ngariba» (the circumciser, ed.) cut my clitoris, then the labia minora. Blood poured down my thighs. Everything went black, time was zeroed and I thought I should die.
Nenelwa Chimosa (25) was only twelve years old when the people she trusted the most forced her under the knife of the circumciser. Thirteen years later the abuse provokes a strong emotional reaction. – I felt terrible. My life was totally ruined because of what was done to me, Chimosa tells. Eyes are moist, but her gaze does not yield an inch. In her mild, round and childish face is a glimpse of sorrow, the sorrow you can read in the face of a person who had to become adult too soon.
Statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that more than 140 million girls and women in the world have undergone genital mutilation. In Africa alone, WHO fears that three million new girls suffer the same destiny each year. Official statistics from Tanzania show that, today, approximately 15 percent of the women in the country are circumcised. However, unconfirmed sources estimate the real prevalence to be much higher. According to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), prevalence among the maasai and kurie tribes are 100 and 85 percent respectively.

Not only a victim
The story about Nenelwa is not a story about a victim. It is the story about a young woman who stands at the forefront of fighting a custom that has been practiced in great parts of Africa for thousands of years. She is working in the Dodoma region with the Inter-African Committee on Harmful Traditional Practices (IAC), an organisation that has been doing awareness-raising and advocacy on female genital mutilation since 1990.
– The best thing is that I can be sure that thanks to the work we are doing here, my own children never have to undergo female genital mutilation, she says. Neither does she fear that the new generation of girls will be exposed to the same suffering she went through.
– I have three younger sisters, two of them are circumcised, but the youngest was spared. She is born after the law against female genital mutilation was introduced in 1996. We give people so much information about the harmful health consequences that they no longer can ignore it. People are intervening if they suspect that someone will circumcise their daughters, Chimosa explains.

Myths, witchcraft and superstition
The arguments for female genital mutilation vary from place to place. In some places people interpret it as a religious order, though neither the Quran nor the Bible mentions it. However, female genital mutilation cannot be entirely excluded from religion – the so-called «sunna circumsion» bears references to Islam, but it cannot be limited to a matter of religion either.  In Tanzania female genital mutilation is more related to culture and rites of passage. Both men and women are circumcised, and it is considered to be a natural part of becoming a person who can marry and have children at the entrance to adulthood.
Anastazia Ngowi is head of the Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Network (AFNET) in the city of Moshi in the Kilimanjaro region. From an office with no electricity and computers, she tells that it is primarily superstition that makes people circumcise the girls there. In this region the chagga and maasai tribes, known for their widespread influence and strong traditions, carry out female genital mutilation. – They are frightening people to believe that if they do not let themselves circumcise, they will either die or go crazy. Often people say that a woman who is not circumcised cannot marry and deliver healthy babies, Ngowi explains, and adds that it is also a question of honour. The parents are afraid of losing face in the local community if their daughters are non-marriageable. She does, however, believe that change is possible: - One day, people will understand, but it is not easy to make people abandon their culture. The African culture is very strong with many myths, witchcraft and superstition.
Also, female genital mutilation is a custom that people make a living from. In some tribes the price of the bride increases if she is circumcised. In a society with extensive gender segregation, the paradox is that this is in fact one of the few areas where women feel they are «something without their men». Status is important: the circumcised woman gets secured economically when she is made marriageable, and the female circumciser earns an independent income by carrying out a role that previously was rather prestigious.

New job
Selina Nhungu (48) has put down «simba» (Swahili word for lion, ed.), the knife she once used to circumcise girls in the village of Mima. But the circumciser also has a story to tell. It is a story about a girl who one day saw her two sisters come home with blood all over their clothes, and how she ran as fast as her tiny little legs allowed her. – I understood what was about to happen when I saw the blood. I ran and ran, but there was no escape, Nhungu tells as tears find their way down her cheeks.
Many of the activists does not share their personal experiences about female genital mutilation unless on request. How many of them who actually have been subjected to it is not easy to guess. Even among those who have dedicated a huge amount of their time to fight the taboos surrounding the custom, limits for how personal you can get are subtle. It is difficult to understand how the circumciser who herself was forced under the razor blade has been able to inflict the same pain on others. Nhungu admits that she had mixed feelings about her job. She knew very well how painful it was for the girls, but at the same time the ceremony was also a time of happiness where people celebrated the transition from childhood to adulthood with transfer of knowledge, singing and dancing.
Today, IAC offers alternative rites of passage where the mutilation is removed but where the other parts that make people proud of their culture remains.

Tough aunt
Ngowi herself was the first in her generation that escaped female genital mutilation, thanks to a tough aunt in her family. She stood up for her and her sisters. – I was lucky. She refused to let herself circumcise and saved the rest of us. Where I grew up you are not allowed to attend weddings and funerals unless you are circumcised, but she didn’t care though the rest of the family denied her.
- How do you think she managed to stand up for herself like that?
A soft and warm gaze sprinkles in Ngowi’s eyes with the thought of her aunt. She answers proudly that the aunt was better educated than most people and earned much respect in the community and in the family. – But also religion. It helps to have a strong faith, she smiles.

Education works
In Norway some question the effects of education and awareness-raising. It is difficult to measure results when accurate statistical baseline surveys on the prevalence of female genital mutilation are lacking. But in the field people are hopeful. – We know about a village in the Tarime district where approximately 90 girls last year were in danger of being circumcised, tells Dr. Leonard Mtaita, the secretary general of the Christian Council of Tanzania (CCT). The girls were saved because local partners intervened when the annual ceremonies were to be executed. Since the law came into place the circumcisions have been concealed and a new practice has emerged – girls are getting younger and younger when they are circumcised, often as babies, with only the clitoris removed. This offers new challenges, and trust among the communities CCT is working in becomes more important than ever. – We are dependent on good contact with the grassroots when the season comes. They know their communities well and inform us so they don’t wind up in a situation where their positions as people who can be trusted are lost, Mtaita explains.

Important law
The activists in Tanzania underscore that the law against female genital mutilation was important. – Previously people could reject our arguments and accuse us of being ‘cultural traitors’ who have given up African culture, but with this law in our hands we can better explain to people that it simply is illegal. Unfortunately there are people within the police and the judiciary system who sabotage the enforcement, Jennifer Chiwute tells from IAC’s office in the capital Dodoma.
For a while statistics were collected and recorded by the health system in the Kilimanjaro region on how many first-time mothers had been circumcised. Ngowi from AFNET tells that it should have been institutionalised in the rest of the country as well, but little happens without local NGOs keeping an open eye. Previously there was a column in the women’s birth journal where doctors or midwives should tick off if the woman was circumcised, but now the column has disappeared. It is difficult to guess what the reason behind the sudden lack of statistical record is.  It can be sloppiness, lack of internal communication within the health system or, simply, corruption. Ngowi will not go into guesswork, but claims that corruption is widespread, and that cases are dropped by local police who approve of female genital mutilation. Chiwute also confirms that corruption is a problem in Dodoma. IAC is familiar with cases where police are paid 100.000.000 shilling (appx. US$750) under the table to turn a blind eye to reports. – The law was important for our work, but it doesn’t matter if it isn’t enforced and supported by political will.
Though female genital mutilation is more widespread in rural areas than in the city, it is not only illiterate people who are sceptical about giving up the custom. – You find the same attitude among some male members of parliament who seriously are of the opinion that human rights is a concept the West has invented in order to promote imperialism in Africa, Chiwute claims.

Cases closed
Contrary to Norway, where a law against female genital mutilation has been in place since 1995 and none have been convicted the last thirteen years, still more people are reported to the police, investigated and convicted in Tanzania.  Unfortunately, cases get closed because of the state of the evidence when people do not want to witness. IAC has mapped and monitored how many cases go through the judicial system. In the Dodoma district, more than 50 percent of the cases were dropped in the period 2000-2003. Only twelve out of 102 cases have been brought to court. Half of them were punished with penalties and up to three months imprisonment.

Call for survey
In Norway, the public debate about mandatory clinical gynaecological examinations of girls has raged. In Tanzania, the activists agree that in principle the only way to surely establish whether a girl has been circumcised is to use such examinations.  Both IAC and CCT wish that a national prevalence survey could be conducted, as it is impossible to evaluate if the activities that are carried out have any effect without accurate knowledge of development over time. Female genital mutilation is a topic not suitable for self-reporting because it is considered very private and besides is illegal. A report from Women’s Research and Documentation Project Association (WRDP) documented a high level of underreporting in an area in North Tanzania where clinical examinations were conducted, compared to self-reporting.
Jennifer Chiwute is reluctant with regards to sanctions against caretakers, and says that she is afraid mandatory clinical gynaecological examinations will prove counter-productive. Instead she suggests that the examinations should be part of the health checks all newborn babies go through three months after delivery. She believes this would make it possible to detect the instances where girl babies are circumcised. – If one uses force we risk that parents do not show up at all on the health checks where children at the same time are vaccinated against tuberculosis and other diseases. That is not a good situation either, Chiwute points out. Clotilda Ndezi from CCT is not that sceptical, but she thinks that it is unrealistic to believe that national examinations can be carried out because the Tanzania health system is too poorly developed. – It could be something, but what you describe is in a distant economical future, Ndezi answers.

Related to poverty
If the question about female genital mutilation is reduced to a matter of culture and values, the relation to poverty and the Western world’s responsibility for maintaining it, is overlooked.
– Today developing countries subsidize developed countries, says Kjetil G. Abildsnes, who is working with tax and extraction industries in Norwegian Church Aid, and previously was employed at the organisation’s country office in Tanzania.  He cites an estimate that developing countries annually lose U.S.$160 billion due to tax evasion. From 2002-2006 mining companies have exported gold valued at U.S.$2.9 billion and only paid U.S.$87 million in taxes. The main reason is extremely unfavourable tax regimes developed in cooperation with the World Bank and international donors in the middle of the 1990s. Each year Tanzania spends U.S.$48 per capita on health, education, infrastructure and water. A minor increase in the resource taxation from today’s three percent to five percent could have paid for such services for three million Tanzanians. – Poverty strikes women and children hardest. This money could have been used to fight female genital mutilation and improve women’s health, Abildsnes says.

Entrances that work
Berit Austveg was previously employed as a health advisor on the Norwegian embassy in Dar es-Salaam and has distinguished herself in issues regarding minority women and reproductive health, both in Norway and internationally. In her opinion two pitfalls must be avoided in the debate about female genital mutilation. The first pitfall is the one-sided focus on genitals and alienation of black women’s sexuality. - Female genital mutilation is a custom that is an offence, not only against the individual woman’s sexual organs, but against her personality as such, she says. Austveg thinks that circumcised women’s sexuality is often portrayed as inherently different from other women’s sexuality. The other pitfall is to let emotions rule the debate. – It is easy to feel morally offended about those parents who subject their daughters to such pain, but let us not shout «boo» just to show that we take this seriously. We have to find entrances that work and stick to them.  

FACTS

•    Cultural custom, especially widespread on the African continent and parts of the Middle-East. Approximately 140 million women around the world live with the consequences of female genital mutilation.
•    Parts of the genitals are removed or labias are sewn together, leaving only a little hole for menstruating.
•    Often pursued in rites of passage, but a new trend is that girl babies are mutilated so they do not inform others.

Sources: World Health Organization (WHO), The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Forum for Women and Development (FOKUS), The Women’s Front of Norway, Berit Austveg (2006)

Anne Bitsch (1978) is taking a master degree in human geography and works as a freelance journalist. The research trip to Tanzania was carried out with funding from The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This article is translated from Norwegian to English with help from Joseph Petta.