30 years have passed, but Fama remembers it as if it were yesterday. “I haven't forgotten anything,” she assures La Vanguardia. And is not for less. That day five elderly women grabbed her and opened her legs so that a sixth, the Ngama, the woman who carried out the genital mutilations, could perform the ablation on her. She was six years old. Three of her cousins and her eight-year-old sister suffered the same fate that day. Fama is one of the 200 million girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), according to UN estimates. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that more than 4 million girls are at risk of genital cutting each year, equivalent to 12,000 cases daily. In Spain, and according to a study published in 2020 by the Ministry of Equality, the number of girls in danger of suffering from this practice then amounted to more than 15,500, with almost 3,700 of them at extreme risk. It is true that in the last 25 years the prevalence of this practice has decreased throughout the world, but despite this it continues to have a great impact on the lives of many girls. Ignoring the majority position of her Senegalese compatriots living like her in Catalonia, Fama, 36 years old and living in Granollers, decided to have her genitals reconstructed two years ago, and her life has changed for her. complete.
That fateful day three decades ago, neither his mother nor his father wanted the ablation performed. “My father couldn't stop crying,” he remembers. But the parents have little to say. It is the oldest members of the family who decide.
Nobody explained to him what they were going to do to him or why. “I remember that I woke up and all the elders of the family were at home. I thought, 'what's going on here?' They didn't tell me anything. “Then I saw my mother crying and later I heard one of my cousins screaming: they were doing it to her.”
There were five older women (one of them was her aunt) who grabbed her tightly, covered her mouth to stop her screaming, grabbed her legs and spread them apart. That's where the Ngama came into action. “Since then I was afraid of that woman. When she died I felt calmer.”
Once the ablation was finished, they gave him hot water, some herbs and applied traditional medicine. "It hurt me a lot". Then they put the five of them in a dark room, “as is tradition.” They slept on the floor, on top of some cloths. “You can't sleep in bed or leave the room, nor walk. Men can't see you, not even your father. “Mine insisted so much that in the end they let him talk to us through a window.”
They were kept locked up for two weeks. And her sister was not recovering. “The area was very itchy, and she scratched herself and more blood came out. "I didn't do it because they would come in and hit you." Remember her sister's cries because of the pain. “It hurt me too but I tried not to cry because to scare us they told us that if we cried, they would do it to us again.” Every day they were treated with hot water and herbs. “That hurt a lot.”
A month later they had a big party. There were dances, drums, gifts… “They bought us new clothes and did our hair. The guests gave us money because we were already women.”
Fortunately, this practice (which is still carried out in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and constitutes a violation of the fundamental human rights of girls and women) is prohibited in Senegal, although it is still practiced in the south of the country. country. Fama is precisely from there, in the Kolda region. “Before they did it to girls of 4, 5 or 6 years old and now they do it to babies, a few months old. Because? That way they can't complain and it's easier to hide it,” she explains.
This practice is often seen as a necessary part of raising a girl and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage. Many times, it responds to the conception of what is considered acceptable sexual behavior and aims to ensure virginity before marriage and fidelity after it. There is a conviction that it reduces a woman's libido and thus helps her resist the temptation of extramarital relations. “If they haven't done it to you, men don't want to marry you,” says Fama.
Obviously, having been a victim of this practice has its physical consequences, as well as mental ones. From the most immediate (intense pain, bleeding, inflammation of the genital tissues, fever, infections such as tetanus or even death), to those that can appear in the long term: urinary infections, vaginal, menstrual, sexual problems (painful intercourse, lower satisfaction...), higher risk of complications during childbirth (hemorrhages, cesarean section, need for resuscitation of the baby...) and neonatal mortality or psychological disorders (depression, anxiety...).
For Fama, the symptoms associated with FGM are part of the past. And two years ago he went to the Dr. Ivan Mañero Foundation to have a reconstruction done. It was through a friend that she learned of its existence and of the possibility of having her genitals reconstructed altruistically. She didn't think about it. Since the intervention, she is a new person. “I don't have any pain, nor have I had any more infections.”
He has also been able to recover his sex life. “Before I didn't feel like it, I felt a lot of pain.” Now she enjoys sex again. And it is not easy, as Ruth Mañero, director of the foundation, argues. “We always explain that the largest sexual organ is the brain. If, once the genitals are reconstructed, you are afraid, everything becomes complicated. What is done is to reconnect the nerve, and the brain has to assimilate that it works again. However, if you put up mental barriers, because she has hurt you for 30 years of your life, the process can be long.”
Fama has almost become an ambassador for the foundation. She advises all of her compatriots who have suffered FGM not to be afraid and to rebuild what they were harmed in her day. But it is not easy for them to take the step. Since 2015, the year the foundation began reconstructions, they have carried out more than 230 consultations, only 12% of which ended in surgery. What is the problem? “The environment,” argues Ruth Mañero. “They are afraid of reprisals, of being abandoned by their husbands if they rebuild. “There is significant social pressure.”
This pressure is such that the fact of meaning can have consequences. “The first woman who had surgery with us and came forward had a lot of problems,” says Mañero. “They even harassed her children at school, they left dead rats at her door, it was an ordeal. In the end she left the front line because she was living a real hell.”
Fama is not afraid to show her face. Neither did she tell her mother and one of her aunts. Both suffered cutting as children and have become activists: they go through the towns of southern Senegal showing their rejection of this practice.
Recently, the foundation has launched a website aimed at various groups: healthcare workers – “so that they know how surgery works and how genitals are reconstructed”, explains Ruth Mañero –, teachers and educators – “so that they know that in their class They may have a girl who could soon be a victim or who has already suffered it” – and finally to the victims, “so that they can know what the surgery is like and which of their health problems may arise from the ablation they suffered.”
In the same way as the Dr. Ivan Mañero Foundation, the Generalitat launched a circuit in 2015 to offer reconstructive surgery - under the responsibility of the Catalan public health system - to women residing in Catalonia who had suffered FGM. Since then, 53 interventions have been carried out.
