Bundu Trap - Windward Community College

Asha Samad
Worldwide, some 80 to 100 million women
have undergone an operation first recorded in
Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. Since then,
“female circumcision” in various forms has
been customary in many African and in some
Asian, Middle Eastern, and indigenous Central
and South American cultures. Very different
from male circumcision (the removal
of the foreskin of the penis), female circumcision
can involve the partial or total removal of
the clitoris and/or “infibulation,” surgical
modification and suturing together of the labia.
In some areas (Chad, Somalia, Sudan),
“decircumcisions” are necessary to open infibulations
before marriage and childbirth.
While many associate female circumcision
with Muslim tradition, it predates Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. It has also been practiced
by Jewish communities and Christians
living in regions where circumcision is customary.
Condemned by African women’s groups
and the World Health Organization as abusive
and often dangerous, female circumcision
persists even where modern African
governments seek to limit or prohibit it.
While most women survive these mutilating
operations, they may suffer immediate and
lasting physical effects. Hemorrhaging, infection,
and infertility are among the serious
complications. The inability to pass urine normally,
pain during sexual intercourse, and excessively
difficult deliveries are common
results. Although harder to measure, emotional
and psychological effects may also ensue.
“You were standing there like a dead
body. She was going to bring you home.”
“I know my way home,” I answer defensively.
“You know your way home, and you
couldn’t keep a tray of food on your
head.”
“I told you I was afraid they were going
to catch me.”
The way Mother is looking at me, I
know that if a garbage truck for children
came along at this moment, she would
happily throw me in.
“They should have just circumcised
you then so you could stay there. Maybe
they’ll find you a husband after that.
You’re no use to me.”
I know my mother is just upset, so I
don’t say anything. I go inside the house
Afterword
All groups circumcising females also circumcise
males. Such groups regard the rite as
an essential part of a child’s socialization.
The operation is done at different ages in different
societies—ranging from a few days after
birth until puberty. However, among some
ethnic groups it is done just prior to marriage,
or, as in Rivers state, Nigeria, in the seventh
month of the woman’s first pregnancy. The
rite can symbolize the stability of the group as
expressed in the faithfulness of its females—
the passers-on of its customs and the maintainers
of its families. The custom also reinforces
respect and authority. The day of
circumcision thus involves not only pain but
also recognition for having become a full
adult and a marriageable member of society.
Other obvious functions of female circumcision
include control of female sexuality and
marital chastity. In patrilineal societies, authority
over the bride is transferred at marriage
to the spouse’s patriline. The bride’s
moral and economic value to her patriline and
to her spouse is dependent upon her unquestioned
virginity as demonstrated by the intact
infibulation.
Many groups feel that attempts to prevent
them from practicing circumcision represent
an attack on their cultural integrity by “colonial,”
Western interests and westernized African
governments. (The Masai, for instance,
are loath to change customs at the behest of a
government that has moved them out of their
traditional lands.) They may fear that loss of
a cohesive tradition, with nothing to replace
it, will result in daughters who are as “loose”
and change my clothes, happy I came
back—at least for now.
NOTES
1. Circumcision; secret society of circumcised
women.
2. Rice porridge.
3. Sisal leaves cooked in West African
sauce.
4. Senegal-style red rice.
5. Cooked cassava dough.
6. Title of honor for a woman who has
been on a pilgrimage to Mecca.
7. A minority tribe of Sierra Leone.
8. “Amen.”
9. “Thanks be to God.”
10. A majority tribe in Sierra Leone.
11. “She sounds like a fishwife.”
12. A shaman who will cast out “bad
spirits.”
Reprinted with permission from Natural History, August 1996, pp. 42–52. © 1996 by Memuna M. Sillah.
6
Article 27. Bundu Trap
as uncircumcised African and Western
women are perceived to be. More generally,
they believe that an uncircumcised daughter
may become centered on herself, rather than
family, home, and group.
Some westernized Africans now debate
the value of female circumcision. But fear
that uncircumcised daughters will not be acceptable
as brides in their communities
spurs many to perpetuate the custom. Some
parents may seek modified forms of the operation
for their daughters and may have the
procedure performed in private clinics or at
home under anesthesia and in antiseptic
conditions.
Some—usually Western-educated African
women, often of independent means, or
those living in the immigrant and refugee
communities of Europe and North America—
have fully rejected the procedure and are educating
women about its deleterious effects
and organizing to end the custom. At the same
time, other women protest what they consider
outside interference in the most intimate aspects
of their culture. They ask why Western
women—whose own culture often leads them
to radically alter their appearance, even
through surgery—are so intolerant of the
practices of others.
What African women on both sides of the
issue resent most is being looked upon by the
rest of the world as self-mutilating primitives.
Even opponents of circumcision feel that
women from the ethnic groups practicing this
ancient custom should be the ones leading the
fight to eradicate it.
Born in Sierra Leone, Memuna M. Sillah
grew up “in the midst of quiet, yet constant,
revolts, especially by teenage girls, against
the unnecessary pain caused by genital mutilation.”
Sillah came to the United States eight
years ago, after living in London, Paris, and
Kingston, Jamaica. Now a graduate student
in sociology at City College of the City University
of New York (CUNY), she has been
actively concerned with the problem of female
genital mutilation since 1993, when she
chose the topic for a term paper in Asha Samad’s
course on violations of women’s
rights. “I then learned,” Sillah writes, “how
widespread the practice is in Africa and other
parts of the world—and the drastic forms it
can take. This knowledge awakened my old
teenage passions against the practice.” Sillah
is now at work on a novel about immigrant
African women in the United States.