LIFE AS A NOMADIC GOAT HERDER
Dirie was born into the nomadic Daarood tribe in Somalia-a life without
electricity, telephones or cars. Home was a portable hut woven from grass.
When she was five, her mother held her down while a local woman cut away
her
genitals.
Afterwards, she was stitched up tightly, leaving a hole the diameter of a
matchstick.
"I felt not complete with myself as a woman. Some days I felt so powerless,"
she said. "When I think back about that, it still disturbs me.
But coming back over that is still the hardest thing for me because you
have
to learn about yourself, you have to feel comfortable with yourself."
Although Dirie survived the razor, her sister and two cousins did not.
The United Nations says female genital mutilation is practised in some 30
African countries as well as parts of the Middle East and Asia. No one
knows
its precise origin, although it may date back to ancient Egypt.
In Somalia, nine of 10 girls are circumcised. Two are likely to die by
bleeding to death or through infection. Others will suffer life-long pain.
FROM DUSTY HINTERLAND TO CATWALK GLAMOUR
Dirie's life changed forever when she was 14. She fled to the Somali
capital,
Mogadishu, after her father tried to marry her to a 60-year-old man in
exchange for five camels. A well-connected uncle provided an escape route
to
London.
She stayed in Britain illegally and survived by scrubbing floors in a fast
food restaurant.
By chance, she was discovered by a photographer who put her face on the
cover of the Pirelli calendar. From there, her career took off.
"It's very sad that I had to make the choice to leave my country and at
the
same time I did not want to leave," she said. "Africa is different. I
was
young. I had nothing to worry about. I had my family, I had my animals, I
had
my simple life. It was beautiful."
Dirie now lives in New York but still feels the contrasts between the West
and her war-torn home.
"Here it seems like it is chaos forever and I'm trying to sit down for a
moment and there's no time for that," she laughed. "In Somalia we don't
have a time so we don't care what time it is. But in the West, everything
is
money-money, power, sucking, sucking away. It is never enough."
CHAMPION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Dirie's testimony is the sad story of thousands of women. By telling her
story, she hopes to bring an end to the suffering caused by female
circumcision.
"I think about every single one of them every day and I'm trying to get
there before it happens to that child," she said, wiping a tear from her
eye.
But the United Nations faces strong opposition because many African men and
women believe in a tradition they say is part of their heritage.
For Dirie, it has little to do with tradition and nothing to do with
religion. "It is mainly God, power control. It's mainly men showing they
are
physically stronger and being cowards and controlling you by torturing
you,"
she said. "It's been going a long time but they can't see the world has
moved on and life changes and they've stuck to it. The men they don't
know
what it feels like-but if I cut his balls off then he knows!"
Dirie waits for the day that female circumcision has been abolished.
"I pray for it every night and I won't rest until I complete my mission
because I'm so deeply into it," she said. "We have to get over this
because
no woman deserves to be sliced up like an animal."
22:08 04-22-99