FGM horror: My fiancé ended our wedding plans

“Relax, we are having a party in a short while”, that is the response a seven-year-old Zipporah Mwangangi got from her mother when, out of curiosity, she asked about a group of elderly women who had visited their home on that particular day.

The women who were in high spirits, sang and danced. Shortly after their arrival early that sunny morning, seven girls from the neighbourhood were also brought to their home.

Ms Mwangangi vividly recalls how these activities led to her undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) against her will at.

At around 10am, all the girls including her, were led to a nearby bush where they underwent FGM, performed by an elderly woman.

She used the same knife on all of them, she recounts. Their screams and attempts to escape were futile as the other women who held them, were too strong for them.

“My father tried to prevent me from undergoing the cut but the women overpowered him. When we screamed, the women raised their voices, belting out tunes to prevent the neighbours from hearing our cries,” she says.

She underwent Type 2 FGM, which entails total removal of the clitoral glands and the labia minora (the inner folds of the vulva).

She recounts fainting and bleeding a lot after the cut. It took her wound two months to heal after it got some infections, a thing that made her miss school for an entire term.

At that tender age, she did not realise FGM would later have devastating effects to her future.

The reality started to dawn on her in the year 2000, when her fiancé abruptly called off their grand wedding a week to the nuptial day.

She had decided to let the cat out of the bag during their last marriage counselling session, when their pastor asked each of them to say something they had always kept to themselves.

“I immediately soul-searched and decided to tell him the truth; that I had undergone the FGM. Hell broke loose and he said that was the end of our relationship as he would not marry ‘another man’. It still pains me that the cut ruined my wedding plans,” she says.

A devastated Ms Mwangangi could not believe her wedding was no more even after all the preparations had been completed.

She then sunk into depression, contemplating suicide at some point.  Life had lost meaning for her. It took the intervention of counsellors for her to re-invent herself.

Even though she later found love and got married, the mother of two says she would not wish FGM even on her worst enemy.

Hate sex

The cut, she says, completely ‘kills’ a woman’s feelings and interest in men, with women who have undergone the cut, having a tendency to hate sex due to the pain and bleeding most of them experience during the act.

Complications during childbirth, she adds, is another challenge circumcised women have to grapple with.

Ms Mwangangi says she always wanted to have four children but could only manage two due to complications during delivery as a result of the cut.

“I can only give birth through Caesarean Section as the cut makes the vagina very tight and, therefore, very hard to open. FGM does more harm than good at it should be stopped completely. Elders and parents should let girls live their life the way God created them,” she says.

More than four decades after she underwent the cut, Ms Mwangangi says she is still very bitter with her mother, the circumciser and the women who watched and celebrated as the heinous act was performed on her.

She, however, reveals that she intends to soon make peace with her mother.

To end FGM in her locality in Mwingi North, where the cut is still ongoing though secretly, Ms Mwangangi, a counsellor by profession, has rolled out initiatives to sensitize locals on the dangers associated with FGM.

Through her organisation Women of Hope, she also enlightens them on what the law says about the outlawed cultural practice.

Many communities that still support the cut consider it a necessary part of raising a girl properly and preparing her for marriage, and are often motivated by beliefs about what is considered proper sexual behaviour.

Kenya banned the practice in 2011, paving the way for the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2011 that carries a minimum punishment of three years imprisonment and a Sh200,000 fine.

According to Unicef, about four million girls and women in Kenya, have undergone FGM. Overall, 21 per cent of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years have been subjected to the practice.

According to UNFPA, long-term consequences of FGM include child birth complications, anaemia, the formation of cysts and damage to the urethra, resulting in urinary problems.

The UN Reproductive Health agency also lists dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse), sexual dysfunction, hypersensitivity of the genital area, increased risk of HIV transmission and psychological effects as some of the other dangers of the cut.

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