Edna Adan- one woman in the desert educating girls and saving women.
Female genital mutilation reflects one of the grosses discrimination and cruelty against women and girls. In last night’s episode of Half the Sky, Diane Lane and Nicholas Kristof visited Somaliland where over 140 million girls are subjected to female mutilation/cutting mostly because of a relentless need to stick with tradition. The women themselves perpetuate this “tradition” on their girls–one woman they interviewed performed from 10 to 12 cuttings a day. On 7 to 9 year old girls.
In Somaliland, there is one woman who gave up everything she had to start a maternity hospital and midwife education center. Her name is Edna Adan. She’s delivering babies. She’s teaching over 1,000 women to become midwives. She’s educating women about female genital cutting. She’s explaining to women that this perpetuation of a violent mutilation to genitals creates obstructed pregnancies. Scarring from the cutting doesn’t allow the skin to stretch–therefore babies can’t come out.
On a daily basis Edna, a self-professed “crazy lady who lives in the desert,” saves women’s lives.
Ways to help, to volunteer, to learn more–click here.
(Image credit: Joshua Bennett/abcnews.com)
miri
October 3, 2012
Excellent. Here’s to Edna and to questioning traditions we participate it because they are, well, traditions. Circumcision, anyone?
Hayley Krischer
October 3, 2012
Doctors, looking for you to weigh in on this. By the way Edna said in the documentary last night that the religion really had nothing to do with it. That no where in the Muslim religion does it say that women should be mutilated — this is really a traditional act to suppress women of sexual “feelings.” So they won’t get so “wild.”
In fact, one woman in a far, far out Somaliland village said that she would never let her son marry a girl if she wasn’t cut. The women perform the cuttings. And the women who perform the cuttings make money from it. No joke, this is a capitalistic venture as well. It is the women in these cultures who have to step out of it and decide that this is going to stop.