Commentary
By Mariama Kandeh, London, UK.
It was with sombre dismay I learnt of the death of a nine-year old girl allegedly during a Female Genital Mutilation process on the 17th of May this year, in a village called Bongama in Eastern Sierra Leone.
I was not shocked by the location because that part of the country is known to be very intransigent when it comes to stopping harmful traditional practices like FGM or Cutting.
While the global picture indicates that FGM/C is becoming less prevalent and younger generations are less likely to be initiated, this news of the murder of this little girl depicts that more stringent measures must be applied in order to save the future of young girls who are caught up in such horrible predicament from day to day.
WHO’s 2006 data of countries that have documented FGM/C as a traditional practice stated that Sierra Leone has an FGM/C prevalence of 94% . This data is recorded for girls and women initiated within the ages of 15 to 49 years. However,
there was no record for the prevalence below the age of 15 even though in my estimation, a large number of younger girls are still being initiated against the country’s domestic law that stipulates that no girl must be initiated below the age of 18.
Sierra Leone is among five Sub-Saharan countries with FGM/C prevalence rates over 90% and it is the only country in South-Western Africa with a very high prevalence rate.
The death of that little girl also forced me to ask all those politicians and other senior people in society that have been paying lip service to the issue of FGM/C or trivializing its effects, whether this death rings a bell or fires a warning shot. Are we being just to humanity? What if this little girl was ourselves, our daughters, nieces, cousins, aunties? A future has been halted, a life ended carelessly.
This girl would very likely have grown up to be somebody who was going to make very meaningful contributions to our society, yet our action or inaction have impeded her contribution to changing the future of Sierra Leone, Africa and the world.
Does this thought ever occupy our minds? Does it haunt us? Well if it has not, I think it’s high time we started thinking from this angle.
The UN country team in a statement called on the government to conduct a prompt, thorough and independent investigation into the girl’s death and to bring those responsible to justice.
It welcomed steps taken by the government to investigate the case, noting that an individual has been taken into police custody.
‘Further, the UNCT recalled Sierra Leone’s commitment during the Universal Periodic Review in May 2011, and in line with its international obligations, that Sierra Leone should urgently adopt measures to eradicate female genital mutilation, and conduct enhanced and robust awareness raising campaigns, particularly among families and traditional leaders, of its harmful impacts,’ the UNCT statements reads.
The death of this beautiful soul also reminds me of how lucky I and so many other women who grew up in that society are.
At nine years old I was either in my primary school in central Freetown studying, giggling and laughing to childhood jokes or I and my friends were at a slope called Okra hill on Tower Hill playing.
At home I would play several of our local games from ‘touch’, ‘balance ball’, ‘six cup’, ‘nothing’, ‘circle games’ to ‘I am flying’. If you were born in Sierra Leone I can sense the smiles these games bring to your face. On other days I and friends will go to the plum tree by the sea and we will pelt stones at the plums until we returned with a full bag of plums or we will go to our backyard and oppress the Mango, Pawpaw and Avocado fruits on their trees. For every Sierra Leonean nine years old the story is the same. Well, almost the same, if it were not for the trauma of FGM/C in many communities.
It was also when I was nine years old that I learnt that children can also carry the problems of the world on their little heads. Indeed at that age the war in Liberia was at its peak while Sierra Leone was starting hers as well. Lots of children were parading the streets day and night. During the day they are street peddlers selling oranges and other items on a tray to help make a living for their families while at night they are engaged in the trade of prostitution to bring income home. Child prostitution became very popular in the 90s with the wars in both Liberia and Sierra Leone. Sadly the roles of children and parents were gradually swapping spaces.
The evil of this world reared its ugly face on the Mano River Union countries with the killing of former president Samuel K Doe of Liberia and the fulfillment of warlord Charles Taylor’s promise to let Sierra Leone and her people taste the
bitterness of war.
A the age of nine I began to fashion my ambitions, my dreams, what I wanted to do when I become an adult. Fashioned by the things I saw around me which I thought were wrong especially for children and women.
At nine, like most children of my generation, I had cried when I heard of rebels and I have been consoled by my parents that the war will end before it reached Freetown.
At nine, the people I trusted were my parents and other relatives who bought me sweets and gave me money. I, like the nine- year old girl murdered during FGM/C, was as vulnerable as a leaf. And from time to time I sought protection from the trustworthy people around me whom I never thought for once that they would betray me. So did the nine- year old girl thought until the moment her trust was squashed by her confidantes; the people she trusted who betrayed her by dashing her off to others who eventually became her killers.
At nine years old, I had no knowledge what FGM/C was. I was told when some of my relatives were going to be initiated into the Bondo society, that they were going to climb a tree and they would fall down from the tree and that was all it
was. My classmate and friend who got successfully initiated in neighbouring Guinea at such tender age had also told me that she was not meant to speak about it as she could die if she did.
I had accepted the tale of falling down from a tree and had even enquired if the tree was a tall or a short one. I had been told it was short so that initiates won’t get hurt.
For the little girl of Bongama whose life has been cut short by people she trusted, she would never be able to sit down like I have just did and write what she remembered at age nine.
If death means going to another world consciously, perhaps she would be able to write about how her life was terminated by her loved ones. But for this world, her life is over and for good, thanks to the wicked people who forcefully got her initiated and eventually caused her death, probably from the shock of the event or from bleeding as it is mostly the case.
Children who get initiated often bleed copiously and instead of seeking professional medical care, the initiators would use herbs to stop the blood oozing out and when this is unsuccessful, the initiate dies miserably.
Even though the country’s domestic law clearly stipulates that FGM must not be done on children under the age of 18, it is still widely practiced all over the country, especially during school holidays.
The nine-year old girl has a really sad ordeal, pathetic, when one thinks of it. This whole idea of maintaining the archaic custom of FGM is made solely to inflict pain and punishment on young girls.
Furthermore, this is a real indictment on Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans. Successive governments have used FGM/C for political gains at the expense of the poor. Will politicians have reacted with this amount of negligence if their children were the ones dying? Would they be treating these issues with levity if they had felt direct negative impacts of this practice? Indeed they would have hurriedly put every measure in place to ensure the practice was halted.
But sadly like in most cases, it is the poor girls in remote villages and communities that are feeling the horrific effects of FGM/C.
The death of the nine- year old also raises a lot of questions on civil society organizations. If this death had occurred in any other country where FGM/C is illegal, the reaction would have been loud and clear; there will an international alert to its realities. People would have come out in their numbers calling for an immediate investigation, prosecution and conclusion of the matter. But this has not happened in Sierra Leone.
For instance the ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ campaign that went viral online helped raised international concern for the Chibok girls abducted by the Nigerian Islamic militants or terrorists, Boko Haram.
For crying out loud, a soul has been lost although she is not the daughter of the President, a Minister or any big figure in society. She died of FGM/C and the high prevalence of FGM/C does not give Sierra Leone a beautiful picture when it comes to that practice.
Apparently, we shout against violence against women and girls and it is disheartening to note that sometimes these acts of violence are committed by women themselves. What a shame to Sierra Leonean women! Sadly even women are playing the dumb game when it comes to speaking against FGM/C for some selfish reasons. But for once we should try to fit ourselves in these girls’ situations. Shame it is indeed.
We have the saying in Sierra Leone that we put out the fire in our neighbour’s house before it reaches ours. So what are we waiting for?
The Bongama nine-year old girl’s ordeal, should be a wake up call to government and other stakeholders who keep sweeping the realities of the effects of FGM/C under the carpet.
As we approach June 16 to celebrate the Day of the African Child and marking the 1976 school children massacre in South Africa with the 2014 theme “A child-friendly, quality, free and compulsory education for all children in Africa", Sierra Leoneans must sit back and recall whether we have been fair to the children of Sierra Leone in terms of them attaining quality education. How can we enhance quality, free and compulsory education for them when from time to time some adults around these children are complacently subjecting young girls to horrible traditional practices that could eventually kill them?
I think the government and stakeholders alike must strive their hardest to ensure that justice is served in the nine-year old girl’s matter and this case must mark a change in the history of FGM/C in Sierra Leone.
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