Jaha's Promise

Khadija, Khadija!

I didn't know I was mutilated as a baby until I was 15.

My clitoris was cut off when I was a week old,

and this is something that happens

to nearly all the girls in The Gambia.

It's called female genital mutilation.

When I was 15, I was brought to America

to marry an older man.

When he tried to have sex with me,

that's when I realized what female genital mutilation was,

and that's when my horror started.

La, la, la, la.

La, la.

La, la, la.

Oh, Da da do all day.

When Khadija was born, I knew that

I could never let this happen to her.

I knew that I had to do something to stop it.

Most of the girls and women you see

on the streets have been cut.

Their clitoris was cut off, or worse.

This has been going on for thousands of years.

I've come home to try and do something to end it.

Even if that means taking on my family,

my tribe, and the whole of Gambia.

So what do you guys think about

when it comes to the issue of FGM?

That we should not stop it.

You don't think

- we should stop FGM? - No please,

we shouldn't stop it.

Do you want your wife to not have any desire?

Or you want her to fully enjoy what you're enjoying?

It's a conversation normally came in

to stop that too much of feeling they might is having.

It's natural, God gave it to her, why stop it?

I don't need to cut my daughter's body parts

to make her, you know, stay calm,

to make her stay a virgin, no.

You need to protect your daughters, don't mutilate them.

It's not helping them.

Like, I've been through it.

It didn't help me.

This is the house I grew up in.

We lived in one apartment with my mom,

and then my stepmom lived in the other apartment.

My family in The Gambia we are Serahules.

When I was growing up, my dad had three wives,

and he has a lot of kids.

You know, the number of siblings I have,

I think at least 30 of us.

Okay, the youngest ones, I really can't name.

Have to call them and be like, who's your mom.

So it's like,

I mean, I have a lot of siblings.

This is where the mosque begins at.

My father is an imam, and he built the mosque

behind our family home.

He boasts when it comes to his kids,

especially his daughters.

None of them dishonored him

by getting pregnant before marriage.

All of them were virgins.

The fact that my dad had other wives, and other kids,

I hated it more than my mom did.

You know, as a child, you were jealous,

'cause you wanted to be the only ones.

And every time he was away, you felt like

they were taking time from you,

and they were taking time from your mom.

So you'd just look at her and know

that she didn't feel happy sharing her husband.

It was very much a Serahule tradition that

women didn't get educated.

Me and my sister, we were the first girls

in our family to be enrolled in school.

My mom felt like it was very important,

even though my dad was against it.

She was very strict,

but with me she was lenient.

And when I come home and say, I would never

marry a guy that has another wife,

I would never let my husband hit me,

she just used to sit and laugh.

When I was eight years old, my marriage was arranged

to a guy that lived in New York.

My bride price was paid.

I wasn't eligible to live with him,

because I was still very, very young.

When I hit puberty, that was when

I was going to be eligible to get married.

As Serahule girl, it's not abnormal for us

to have our marriages arranged when we are very, very young.

If you are actually over 18, and you don't have a husband,

people think that you're expired in some kind of way,

so that's a problem.

When I was about 13, my mom found out

that she had breast cancer.

I remember being in a hospital with her

when the doctors told her that she only had a few months.

She looked at me and said, "Don't listen, they're not God.

"That's not going to happen.

"They're lying."

It was hard to let go, 'cause we were very close.

Gambissara's the most conservative, hard line,

and hostile place that you can go and talk about FGM.

It is a village that has 100% of women cut.

It's where my family is from.

This is Gambissara.

When I was young, I would spend

the whole Summer there and going to the farms.

And I haven't been back since my mother passed away.

The whole village came out.

It blew me away, 'cause I wasn't expecting that,

and knowing that I came here to discuss FGM.

Jaha, are you okay?

This is my mom's home.

That was the last place that I saw my mom alive.

The last place that I heard her laugh.

This was the first time there was

ever an open debate about FGM,

and it was really, really amazing.

For women like her, they have never seen an uncut woman.

They don't know any other way.

The lack of basic health care

is a huge contributor to the issue of FGM.

You know, Gambissara doesn't even have a good hospital.

We live in a society wherein women are made

to believe that, you know, you have to bow down to your man.

Men tell women, we want our daughters cut,

and they cut them.

My aunt, my sisters told me that this is how we lived.

I should have never been taught

to accept those kind of things.

When I was 15, I was brought to America by my dad,

to get married to the guy that I was promised to.

He was in his forties.

I arrive in New York on Christmas Day.

My husband was at the airport to pick me up.

He wanted to touch me, and hug me and

I didn't want him touching me, and I kept hitting him.

Soon as I get to my aunt and uncle's house,

there was people, there was cooking, there was everything.

And I knew that that was it.

The night of the marriage, they had an older woman,

kind of like a sex advisor,

that would tell you about what to do.

You know, this is the position to make it more comfortable,

or this is the products that you can use

to kind of lessen the pain.

This woman actually bathes you.

She rubbed perfume, lotion all over me.

And they dressed me.

They made me wear white lingerie.

They made me wear these waist beads.

I told my dad that I didn't want to get married.

I begged, I pleaded, I did everything

to just ask him not to make me go through this.

They took me to his house.

When I got there, they took me inside the room.

They have this tradition

of making you kneel to your husband.

Then they left me there by myself with him.

I cried the whole time.

I cried for my mom, and felt like

she could have been here, she would have saved me.

I was having pain, and difficulties with sex.

And he couldn't really penetrate me.

After days of trying to have sex, and not being able to,

they said, maybe she's infibulated.

In my tribe, we are mutilated when we are about a week old.

The clitoris is cut, as well as the labia,

and the vagina is sealed, leaving only a tiny hole.

When you're infibulated, you can't really have sex

until you're cut back open.

That's when they decided to take me

to a doctor in downtown Manhattan to be reopened.

I don't know what he used, but it was like a gel,

and then he did what he did.

It was painful.

And this doctor told me I had to have sex

right away in order to keep it open.

That's when I realized what it meant

to be infibulated, and what FGM actually means.

It's just something that women never talk about.

You know, they never talked to me about the pain.

They don't tell you that sex is going to hurt forever.

This is not a conversation that we have.

We have a cultural silence.

You know, FGM is a practice that you can't reverse.

Once a girl has gone through, is a practice

that they live with for the rest of their lives.

But when I got married, because I was infibulated,

if you know what infibulation is,

literally, you can't have sex until they reopen you.

And when you're also delivering your baby,

I have three kids, but each time I deliver my babies,

they literally have to cut me open.

And that's because I've bene through FGM.

Is it really true that it will reduce sexual desire?