Desert Flower (The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad)

I became aware of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) after watching this German biographical film directed by Sherry Hormann - Desert Flower (The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad) on yesterday.

FGM also known as female circumcision or female genital cutting which WHO (World Health Organisation) has defined as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." An impractical culture practice of a destructive procedure that has been handed down for generations because of the belief that it will result in chaste and marriageable daughters in Horn of eastern Africa, northern Saudi Arabia, southern Jordan and northern Iraq. The procedure is often performed by an untrained practitioners on girls between infancy and age fifteen, usually without anesthesia or proper surgical tools (a needle and thread to stitch the girl back together after the cutting or thorns plucked from nearby bushes are used) to set the wound until it seals. It not only causing intense pain and psychological trauma, it also poses severe short- and long-term health risks, including hemorrhage, infection and increased risk of HIV transmission, birth complications and even death.

It is estimated that around 140 million women and girls around the world are affected by this cruel practice, including 92 million in Africa. Waris Dirie (born in 1965), an internationally renowned Somali-born fashion model is one of who undergone FGM as a child and her extraordinary true story was brought on the screen in 2009.

TERENCE DANIEL DONOVAN
(14 September 1936 – 22 November 1996)

Waris Dirie (Liya Kebede)(her first name means in Somali Desert Flower) was born in Galkayo, Somalia, where she was one of a dozen children raised by a family of travelers. Waris grew up poor and at the age of three, like many girls in East Africa, she was the victim of genital mutilation. At thirteen, she was sold to marry a sixty years old man who has already got three wife and she decided to ran away from her oppressive life to Mogadishu when she was illiterate and impoverished, with nothing to her name but a tattered shawl.

Her first leg of a remarkable journey take her to London, where she worked as a house servant and later at a McDonald’s. At eighteen, she was discovered by one of the Britain’s leading fashion photographers, Terence Donovan and she became an international celebrity. In 1997, at the height of her modeling career, Waris spoke for the first time with Laura Ziv of the women's magazine Marie Claire about the FGM that she had undergone as a child, an interview which received worldwide media coverage. That same year, Waris abandoned her modeling career and became an UN Special Ambassador for the Elimination of FGM.

In the fall of 1995, the real Waris Dirie met jazz musician Dana Murray in a tiny jazz club in New York and soon after she gave birth to their son, Aleeke in 1997. However, the relationship eventually dissolved. Today, Waris Dirie lives in Austria with her two sons Aleeke and Leon.

WARIS DIRIE

“I feel that God made my body perfect the way I was born.

Then man robbed me, took away my power and left me a cripple.

My womanhood was stolen.

If God had wanted those body parts missing, why did he create them?

I just pray that one day no woman will have to experience this pain.

It will become a thing of the past.

People will say "Did you hear, female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Somalia?"

Then the next country, and the next, and so on, until the world is safe for all women.

What a happy day that will be, and that's what I'm working toward.

In'shallah, if God is willing, it will happen.”

This horrible tradition is still practiced in many countries around the world today and according to records kept by the United Nations more than 8000 girls become victims of this heinous crime every day. Dessert Flower is truly a touching, emotional and encouraging film that tells an incredible story of an incredible woman with an incredible spirit and nothing will make you appreciate your life more as a free woman after watching it.

Movie Trailer:

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