PV=nRT

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the cutting of or removal of the clitoris.

Complications are generally: Sex for females can become exceedingly painful, nerve ends distorted by the cliterectomy sometimes never heal. Part of a ritual, the knife used to cut the first girl is used for subsequent girls without sterilization. In large groups of girls, this has been said to lead to the introduction of blood-borne diseases, like HIV, during the removal. Psychological significance, no matter the age of the female, can only be imagined.

The coin is flipped now- the perceived advantages of the tradition: During the time of healing after the cliterectomy, priceless instruction is given to the newly circumcised girls. How do you cook? How do you run a household? How do you get, keep, and live happily with a husband? It’s a time when, given the immobilization caused by the removal, the girls are an almost literally captive audience.

A spotlight has illuminated the tradition on the international scene, the WHO, extensions of the UN, and Equality Now championing the awareness campaign fighting to eradicate FGM. Deeply intercalated into West African culture, however, it is proving a hard element for them to distill and eliminate.

For example, like an oil company hearing about the plans for a car that runs on air, the circumcisers that derive their well-being from the tradition have strove to perpetuate it. A child born to an uncircumcised mother aided by a midwife who is also a circumciser will somehow be suffocated. “Babies die at childbirth if the mother is uncircumcised.” An uncircumcised woman is labeled a “borka” and can be unofficially sentenced to the societal fringe. Political doors are closed to her as well as employment opportunities.

Labels and labeling are a strange game. In the debate over abortion in America, one party waves a flag declaring their “Pro-Choice” stance. So what does the opposition party name itself? “Anti-Choice?” Of course not, they are “Pro-Life.” Republicans in the US wouldn’t want to be labeled as “Anti-Democracy” as much as Democrats would fain be called “Anti-Republic.” So would those in favor of maintaining the tradition and preventing the legislative outlawing of FGM consider themselves “Mutalists?” Of course not, they would be “Traditionalists.” And that is what I would like to briefly address. The razing of tradition.

When men spear through buildings, a city, and a nation’s heart with planes, 11 men and women set their countries on fire by self-immolation, and hand grenades are sent into night clubs and bus stops like bowling balls, it is clear that in our globalized theater, men hold the character of their cultures central. Even as removed as I am, the few radio waves that make it through the jungle to my back porch tell the same story of frictions between cultures; white collared cataclysm in the EU, cars and people alike retooled into bombs in the Middle East, and lethal riots in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Liberia are all shoves against would-be walls forcing a conformity.

Globalization expansion paralleling the speed of technological growth, the dynamics of globalization are sometimes shrouded in as much mystery to governments and their analysts as computers are mystery to survivors of the pre-digital world. Where cultures expand to overlap, painful interactions due to misunderstanding can occur. Where there is misunderstanding, toes will be stepped on.

Sit tight and read this example of cultural ignorance- A student was sitting in a classroom. That would have seemed normal and right except every other student was outside singing the national anthem. Being my responsibility that week to keep students where and when they were supposed to be, I called the boy out of the room with puffed-up authority.

                His limping approach told me without having to ask why he hadn’t joined his peers at assembly, but the question of why there were forty-or-so black circles all over his leg took its place.

“Iron.”

“Iron? You were burned with an iron?”

“Yes.” He looked down and away not showing me his face.

“Who… burnt you with the iron?”

“My mother.”

What kind of depraved punishment was that? What kind of parent does that? Refusing to answer why his mother had burned his lower leg with a cherry-red iron, I wrote his name on my arm and marched to find the closest senior teacher, planning to find out what Sierra Leone’s version of Social Services was.

“It was to heal him.” The senior teacher explained.

“What?”

“They think the heat enters the bone and it heals the child.”

A maniacal mother I’d been cursing in my mind’s eye transfigured to a desperate mother trying whatever she knew to heal her child. You might think I’m pointing out the mother’s medical ignorance here, but I’d like to emphasize my own.

I’m not condoning the use of flesh-burning techniques to heal, and certainly not giving my blessing to the practice of excising a woman’s sex organs, but one thing I wholeheartedly would endorse and encourage is the use of ears and eyes before words and uneducated action. It seems that, given our planet isn’t increasing in volume, as the number of entities in our world increase along with social temperature, the pressure on us will increase as cultures collide with greater frequency. Boiling, freezing- sometimes an explosion- results from these variables going too far askew, and given the narrow range of conditions our species can survive in, let us try something. Being observant.

Observant of the way people differ from you. Observant of disparities. Observant of intentions behind actions. Observant even of the fact that the fervency you supplicate yourself to your religion with can be matched or surpassed by those subscribing to a different set of beliefs. Observant of the toes we don’t even know we might be about to crush.

I’m sure this carries little weight coming from a young mind with no expertise. However, at risk of sounding extremely disrespectful, I’ll say it is much more common for adults to wear glasses to help them see than it is for youth. For example, even the small amount I’ve aged in Mambolo, a Temne dominated region, I’ve lost perspective on the Mende and other tribal regions of Salone that are diverse as river rocks. It’s not because I’m growing senile or ignorant- of course I’ve been learning more and more every day- but when I take time in Freetown to look around at a mish-mash coming together, I see I’ve been becoming narrowed. We’re natives and therefore products of our own culture, and it takes exercise to grow our minds to allow room for different cultures and creeds to crowd in with our own. Observation is that exercise. Observation and the utilization of the awareness that follows.

Let’s look around often. Please.