Hibo Wardere retells the harrowing story of undergoing FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) at just six years old and how she now inspires change as an anti-FGM campaigner to Lilufa Uddin.
Hibo Wardere tells her story of undergoing FGM at just six years old
"Before the cutting, I had an amazing life, it was beautiful. "
I was the centre of all the horrible songs at school that they would sing about
how ugly and uncut I was, because my mum didn’t get me cut. She said it was
because she thought I was too skinny. So one day I came back home and cried and
said I’m not going back to school, unless you cut me. Because I’m thinking
whatever they’re so proud of, and actually bullied me with, must be something
amazing. And after that, she put in plans for the cut, which involves a huge
party where, before the FGM procedure, pre-dominantly your family members,
especially female, and all the aunties come. You know the ones your mum forces
you to call them auntie and they are not your real aunties.
Everybody brings presents. It felt like magic and I thought,
“My God, I should’ve asked for this long time ago, I would’ve got all these
presents.” I was centre of attention, everyone was making me feel
absolutely amazing, but looking back that’s kind of like grooming. They groomed
you, because they never actually told you what’s been cut, where it is being
cut and how much you’re gonna suffer.
That morning, my mum woke me up, fed me breakfast and she walked
me to this makeshift hut that my aunty made and then in front of this hut,
there was the cutter and the two helpers standing. And when we went in, I
passed the cutter who was standing there with my mum. One of the cutter’s
helpers was sitting on the floor, with her legs wide open, and my mum said, we
need you to go and sit between her legs. I didn’t question it and I just sat
down and immediately as I sat down there, she brought both her arms underneath
my armpits – I just felt, why you holding me so tight?
The cutter sat right in front of my legs and she told me to open
up my legs, and before she did that, one of the helpers was holding my chest
and pulled my dress up and I just thought, okay. You know as a child, you
just start to feel, something is not right. And I just looked at my mum
and she was like, “Its ok Hibo, its ok Hibo, don’t worry.” And
she asked them to yank my legs up, and when I say yank, it’s not a normal
yank.It feels like they are pulling your thing out of the socket. That’s how
much it hurt and then after that, she had she opened a brown bag and millions
of razors fell out and she started to look around and I just knew then
something awful is going to happen. I started to cry, and my mum was like ‘”Its
ok, don’t cry darling.” The cutter was yelling, “She’s crying and I
haven’t even done anything,”
I noticed she had long nails on her thumb and her index finger and
I couldn’t understand why she didn’t have nails anywhere else, but those two,
she had long nails. And I come to find out that they act like tweezers
and before she cut that alone, it was making my whole body in shock and in
pain, because she pulled it so hard. I literally thought, she took it off with
her nails, but she didn’t. She took the razors out and did just a one
chop.
My God, I was just gone. Gone, with pain. Everywhere I had pain, and
yeah it was like before I could scream for that, there was another cut. Another
cut, it didn’t stop. It was like eternity cutting and I just felt like I was
drowning in pain and I didn’t know what to do, and I just screamed and screamed
and my mother was completely quiet, but I could see that she was in pain.
In that moment, I just felt everything I believed, the love, the trust,
everything disappeared. With one cut, everything disappeared. And I
just felt it doesn’t matter how much I scream, no ones going to help me today,
no one. Not even the most trusted person in the world to me. And I
started crying, “Please God take me, please take me.” I just wanted to
die and things started playing in my mind – the girls bullying me and I thought
what the hell were they bullying me for? Why was it they felt this amount of pain
was to be proud of?
I was in the hut for 12 days, they always came in and out. I
didn’t talk to my mum at all in all those days, I couldn’t look at her. It was
just my aunty, who was holding my hand. You were in a couple of days of horror
in that hut, in the heat. They systematically starve you; you aren’t
given food, just sips of water. They don’t want you to wee too much;
they want the wound to heal up, so that way you are starved. And in those 12
days, what goes through your head, you’re just six, but you grow up so fast, it
was like .. There was nothing else in the world. Everyone else was out there; I
could hear the noise, in their own world. I was in my whole world, you feel
like your world is empty. Men are never in there; no my dad didn’t see me
once. They completely shut that world off.
But I know that I was prepared to kill myself if they married me
off. One of the things that I found out when I was growing up is that she said
we did this to you, were going to do this to your girls. And I said, you didn’t
tell me what would be cut and all I could think about was you think I’m going
to let a child of mine go through what I went through, I’d rather die. I told
her that I would commit suicide and I meant it, if I was still back home and
they married me off. I would have. No child of mine will go through the pain I
went through.
My dad wanted us to move from Somalia, because the civil war
started. We moved to Kenya, but we weren't there for long. We kept on moving
from one place to the other, because we didn’t have papers and the police were
chasing people that didn’t have papers, because a lot of Somalians were pouring
out in the community.
An opportunity came up where a family friend was coming to London,
and so I came here with her.The minute I arrived in the United Kingdom, all I
received was kindness – the policeman gave me his coat because I was shivering
like mad. I literally thought I was walking into a massive fridge. In the
airport, they could see me and the woman.. We weren’t normal people. I was
shivering, so he took off his coat and walked with us and took her and me into
this small room. He went and got tea for us, really lovely.
Actually, after a few weeks, I went to the
doctor and said I need to wee like a normal human being. I got defibulation to open
it up. It was my first ever freedom, it was really amazing. The first time I
weed like a normal human being, I remember having these flushes of memories
that were blocked.
I lived in the hostel, which was perfect for me, people my age
were there.It's very hard to get away from the way you were raised – you know I
was very reserved, but I was wearing all kinds of things. I was wearing jeans,
all sorts of things that weren’t allowed. My hair was out. I cut my hair off, because my hair
was up to my back, it was because my mum loved it, it just symbolized my mum
and I wanted to get rid of it. And I just remember standing in front of
the mirror one morning and taking some scissors and I just chopped them off
really bad and it was kind of zig zag and one of my friend saw and some of them
literally cried, “Oh what did you do to your lovely hair!’ and I’m like “I
dunno, thank God I really feel light”. But it was just rebellious things,
wearing my jeans, I was very skinny, I just loved everything, it was new..
experimenting with everything. Nobody
reacted to what I was doing, which was amazing, for me it was just freedom.
Me and my husband met here and my friend was in love with him. She
would come home and be like, “I met this guy, they have their own flat” and I’d
say, “How did they get their flat?” and she’d say, “He knows how to get a flat
and he’s really lovely”. And she would describe him and how he looks. She would
say he’s tall; I love tall, everything she was saying. I was like “oo, we need
to talk” and then she mentioned he cooks and I
was like “wow, a Somalian man who knows where the kitchen is, hallelujah! I
need to see this man.” And
I said, “Are you sure he’s not bewitched or nothing? “And she said his room is
impeccable.
So one day he invited all six of my friends over for lunch,
so we all went to his house and the minute he came and picked us up from the station..
The way he smiled, I just felt something and I just thought, “Oh my God, he’s
tall, he’s dark, he’s handsome”. I hadn’t looked at a man in his face before
and here I was. I just felt something. When we was in the sitting room watching
television, I said “Nasra, where is he?” And she said, “He’s in the kitchen,
preparing the food.”In my head, I thought I need to see this man, so I said I
needed to go to the toilet. They think I’m going to the toilet and I
sneakily enter the kitchen. I purposely went to the kitchen and he was chopping
onions. I stood there, going “You are cutting onions” and he said “yes” and I
said “You’re not crying” and he went”yeah” and I said, “but you’re cooking
onions” and he said “Yeah we established that.” And he smiled, and in my head I
was like wow. And I smiled back. Then my friend came and said “what are you
doing in the kitchen?” and before I could speak, he said, “Oh she was just
looking for the toilet, I was just telling her where the toilet was”. Now you know a man likes you
when he lies for you. And I thought, “Oh you like me too”.
He made pasta with chicken that day; it was really, absolutely
beautiful.
He came to the hostel once. I opened the door one day and said,
“Nasra is not here”. And he said, “I’m not looking for Nasra, I came here for
you.” I had never spoke to a guy before. I said, “Oh my God, some weird aunty
is going to see you.” And he was like “comorn there’s only White people here”.
I didn’t open the door; I didn’t know what to say. He stood there for 45 minutes
in freezing weather; he didn’t go, so I thought, “What the heck do you have to
lose? He’s still there!”
I said, “Why are you still standing there?” He said, “I’m not
going, till you come and talk to me.” And there was a café right in front of
the hostel, and he said were not going far, just that hostel. So we went to the
café and he said what do you want to drink and I said, “I can pay for
myself, thank you”. And he said, “fine”. We got the tea, and I said, “What do
you want?” And he said, “I’m from Somalia just like you, I just want to know
you.” I said I don’t understand, I know what he means, I’m just making it hard.
He said, “I just want to know you better, I think I like you.” And I said, “You
think you like me?” But we started talking and it turns out he doesn’t live far
from I live in Somalia. It was a good thing, but there was a problem. When he
told me what tribe he was from.I knew about tribes in Somalia, we don’t mix.
You are told, don’t mix up with this tribe, don’t mix up with this tribe. But
for me, I didn’t care, I thought why should I care about tribe, we are in
London. After two days, he came back; he said could we go for something to eat.
I said okay, so went McDonalds in Holborn. So we went in there and said what do
you want to eat, and I said, “I dunno, I haven’t had food here before.” And he
said, “Okay”. So he got me
a fish sandwich and I ate it fast and I said I want to have another one, and I
said, by the way, don’t think of me as greedy, I’ve just never haven eaten this
before. But that was the beginning for us, first date as you would call
it. And after three months,
he asked me to marry him and I said yes and 27 years later, we’ve got seven
kids.
Oh my God, don’t even get me started on the wedding, we didn’t
even have a wedding. We didn’t know anyone; my sister was here by then, with
her kids. She was about 30 something. She didn’t like him because of his tribe.
She didn’t want us to be together. But me being me, I thought I’m in love with
this guy, I don’t care about tribes. And when I called my mum to tell her, she
said already knew because my sister had told her. She wouldn’t listen and I
just put the phone down. And it was a turbulent start, we didn’t get married,
because we didn’t know anybody, the only person I knew was my sister and she
wouldn’t do arrangements for us. So we didn’t have a wedding, we just went to
the mosque, did the nikaah. That was it. One of his friends came as a witness,
and what I didn’t know is that he actually went and spent the whole of his salary, which
was about £80, which was a lot in the 1990s, he went and bought bedding for the
bed, made the room look amazing, bought me a silver ring and I came back to a
bedroom that I didn’t recognize. He took all this time and made it special for
me, because he knew how I felt about Somali weddings, massive, 7 days of
non-stop celebration and he made it special. It was Whitechapel mosque; lovely
Sheikh and the Sheikh said does your dad know. And I said I’m over 18, my
father is not here and I love this man and he said that’s enough for me. And he
did the nikaah and that was it, and afterwards we went home.
For me, before we got married, I had to tell him that I am not a
typical Somali girl, where you expect her to be completely sealed up. And all
that, I said I went to the doctor and opened myself up. And he was like, “I
didn’t know how to start that conversation with you, because I was going to ask
you to go to the doctors, but I’m glad you did.” I thought he was going to run
if I tell him that, because most of the men would think I’d already had sex but
he didn’t have that mentality. And I also told him if we had kids, they would
never be cut, I said I’d kill you if you even mention the word. And he said, “
I know you mean it”. But he
said he didn’t want his girls cut. It turns out that when his sister was cut,
she nearly died and that left him with emotional problems, and he said he never
wants his girls to be cut.
Most of the families are still stuck, because if you have a
dinosaur in your family, a grandmother, even if the mother doesn’t want to cut,
it’s the grandmother that would always insist on that. Also, sometimes
communities as well will talk about your daughters if you didn’t cut her. But
most of the Somali people in London, I would say they have a better education
now. They understand that in this country it is illegal.
Some of them are going to other countries, not necessarily
Somalia, they’re going Dubai. In Dubai they don’t have a legal stand to say
actually this is illegal in this country. I went there recently last year and I
was talking with the department of justice there. And I was telling them,
people come to your country and perform this, because you don’t have a right
legal frame saying this is illegal. So many people go to Dubai to perform this,
rather than go to Somalia.
My journey has been amazing, when I started speaking about FGM 7
years ago, they did not trust me. They thought I was a lunatic, talking about
culture and stuff, but forward to now, they actually do respect what I do. They
come to my events. Women, men. I had actually my first event,where there was a
lot of men,which I actually thought was cool. I thought they wee never going to
come, never going to appear, but 45 of them came and it was absolutely
magnificent. And I used one of our presentations to show them everything, to
explain the emotional ties, the psychological ties, and the physical ties. And
it was quite shocking for them; they didn’t know women suffered in childbirth
and all the other problems it can create.
For the first time, men are discussing this with their wives,
they’re helping each other, and that came through education. Education is a powerful powerful
thing. Education can change mindsets and for women, it’s more than FGM when you
talk to them, there are many more things that affect them. Because some women go through divorce
because of FGM, some women go through domestic violence, because she doesn’t
want to have sex, so he ends up divorcing her. Or he’s divorcing her because
she thinks she doesn’t enjoy sex. Its causing depression, it’s affecting every
aspect of her life. But that doesn’t mean they’ve connected every little thing
to FGM. The urine infections, the way they feel, they don’t connect these
things to FGM, because like I said before, it’s a social thing. When your
friend does not complain, your mother didn’t complain, you will certainly not
complain. The communities we come from do not complain.
Many girls have come forward, especially in schools. In secondary
schools. In secret, they did, and in some cases, in front of their own
teachers. And when that happens, I am not allowed to be involved. It becomes a
child protection issue. But schools have reported that a lot of people have
asked for help, it has opened the gateway, which I always knew it would. Either
a girl comes forward and says I need help, I’ve undergone FGM or I think I may
be about to have FGM and I need help. If she’s younger than 18, I have to
notify whatever school she’s going to, so the child protection team can get
involved. If she’s over 18, then I can refer her to clinics, I can refer her
for emotional support, psychological support, and I can do that.
Once in a bus, where a woman recognized me and said “You’re
Hibo Wardere.
You went to my daughters school”, and I said, “Yes”. And she
was screaming and said why did you tell her about that and I said, “Okay what
did your daughter teach you?” and she said “I could go jail for 14 years?
There’s a lot of problems with it”.
All I was interested in, was.. What was the daughter teaching her?
Because it is quite apparent that what we teach the children, they go back and
actually educate their parents. So whatever this parent’s plan was, it’s out of
the window that is how I took it. Because she was just agitated that parents
felt it wasn’t my right. Apart from that, you get old men on Twitter, stop
talking about our culture. That’s just weak men. Apart from that, I didn’t get
that much backlash from it.
If you think you speaking out is going to create division in your
family and you are not ready to handle that, don’t do it. But if you feel
strongly about this and want to talk about it, please do, because there’s
thousands of people, 200 million women and girls who have undergone FGM. Most
of them are silent; most of them don’t speak, because they are afraid of
repercussions. Yes there
will be repercussions, but if you’re brave enough and courageous enough, stand
up for what you believe and protect your sisters.