Saturday, April 02, 2016

From FGM victim to teacher: ‘You are always running from it. But you get tired. You have to confront it’

Hibo 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 meeting. It was 2012, and a 10-year-old pupil, 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 apparent to Wardere, was never mentioned – the fear that Halima would be subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) during this trip. The girl, and her parents, left the country and never returned. What the headteacher didn’t know at that point, but may have suspected, was that Wardere had also been a victim of FGM.

“I wish I’d been more vocal,” 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 get involved with them. I knew that if I heard about it, it would drag my emotions up and I wasn’t ready to tackle that. I stayed away from the community and concentrated on raising my kids, being busy. Until that 10-year-old, I wasn’t ready to face what was happening here.”

We sit outside a cafe in Walthamstow, east London, near where Wardere lives and works as FGM mediator for the borough, educating police, social workers, healthcare professionals, teachers and children. The sun bounces off the sequins on her hijab; the effect is like bursts of red and gold fireworks going off around her face. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. One Nigerian couple's journey to end female genital mutilation...
  2. Mummy why did you cut me?' Survivors share the pain of FGM...
  3. 200 million women and girls live with female genital mutilation...
  4. 'The only good woman is a cut woman'
  5. The Gambia bans female genital mutilation...
  6. Living in fear of female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone: 'I'm not safe in...
  7. 50 girls were taken from the UK to Somalia for female genital mutilation ...
  8. Breast ironing in the UK: Girls' breasts being flattened with hot stones and...
  9. 92% of married women in Egypt have undergone female genital mutilation...
  10. Female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa (graphic)

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