The wonder women of Africa

Bogaletch Gebre: An end to female genital mutilation
Small, perfectly symmetrical thatched huts stand dotted among orderly plantations of false banana and mango trees in the Kembatta region of southern Ethiopia. More than 30 years ago, in one of these huts, a small girl called Bogaletch Gebre lay screaming while an elderly woman cut away her entire clitoris and labia, without anesthetic, to ensure she'd be marriageable. When the wound closed, Boge was left with only a small hole through which to urinate.

Female genital mutilation (FGM), common to numerous countries throughout Africa and the Middle East, including Somalia, Kenya, Yemen and Sudan, is centuries old and is believed to make women clean and docile. But in reality, some girls bleed to death and many die in childbirth because their vaginal opening is too small and scarred to allow a baby to be born.

Initiating change
The first girl in her community to study past Grade 4, Boge walked nearly 10 kilometres a day to primary school. She secured scholarships to complete high school, then degrees in Jerusalem and the United States. When she returned home, Boge did something even more extraordinary: she transformed her country's culture. Thanks to a powerful social movement she initiated to change attitudes toward the place of women in society, FGM is no longer performed in seven southern Ethiopian districts.

"Having seen and experienced what I did," says Boge, "and then having the chance through education to escape the backbreaking, spirit-crushing situation of women — if I had not tried to free women from this burden there would be something wrong with me. If one grows up in those conditions, one is challenged to do something about it."

Looking at female genital mutilation from a new perspective
Overturning a deeply ingrained cultural practice would seem an impossible task. But Boge is actually succeeding. Education and constant discussion are her keys. "I first discussed what had been done to me with an American friend. She was horrified, but I defended the practice, asking how she dare to question a sacred part of our culture. But she encouraged me to read books about women's natural right to be equal with men.

"I had a vision," explains Boge, "to help one girl be spared what I had gone through." In 1999 she started a self-help movement for women in her home district of Kembatta. The group receives funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) via Oxfam Canada. The Kembatta Mentti Gezzima-Tope (KMG) centre trains women who have undergone FGM to be health workers, peer educators, legal advisers and HIV experts. They talk about the dangers of FGM all over Ethiopia.

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