Women circumcision

I start my day in a small diner where Emmabeth always makes something with beans, peas, eggs, lentils, tomatoes, onions, potatoes or avocados. She enjoys cooking and it shows. Emmabeth is one of the few who miraculously runs a business with her husband. A man serving is nit a usual sight in this culture. Nevertheless their diner is a well-known place and impresses me as a family business as well.

It is twenty past seven. It is chilly outside – around 17 degrees. Bustling on the streets has not yet begun. During the very last week of my stay there is always something new which takes me so that it is difficult to aim my thoughts to another matter.

Yesterday we went to visit a small Aron who was born seven days ago. Trying to come up with the words to convey what I experienced and the local customs. Many of the situations seem unbearably difficult. A woman I know who gave birth to her first child had been circumcised and the scar tissue that formed when the clitoris was removed made the labor very complicated. Since it is not common here to discuss intimate matters I thought circumcision was shedding. Governments battle against it also shows on numerous posters. I was quite certain that in protestant churches this custom is long forgotten. My belief that women of 30 and under were not the victims of this tradition was another one of my notion. Yesterday opposite was clarified. Only two or three years ago was this tradition outlawed. It feels as if I have gone back to the era of witch hunting. Just yesterday when I was visiting the small baby it was circumcision day for small Aron. For some explainable reason the procedure is done on girls when they are seven years old. I also heard of a tradition about the rhesus conflict. The mother is fed a peace of her child’s ear (auricle). What is fed to the mother is told to her only after she has swallowed it already. Once the mother finds out what she has eaten the problem is said to clear. All of this kept me from asking further questions because I did not feel I was ready to absorb more of the local folk medicine and traditions. So I have spent a whole day in the knowing that there are only a few small girls around me in Soddo who have not been circumcised. Fight against it is on and circumcisions as well.

MERLE