Betrayed By My Own

This is not an idle claim, but one that I can personally attest to, it all began while in my fifteenth age when my father was transferred to a district in the fur east to serve as a district health officer. During those pivotal adolescent years, my life changed dramatically.

Settling in a new community was quite hard, a few months in school, my father told me he was taking me to a womanhood ceremony during the holidays, I was curious to know what exactly this was. I asked a few friends, and they only laughed at me, others told me I had to shade blood to be a true woman. I had shade menstrual blood before. At some point I felt it was unworthy, so I asked my father about it. He told me it was very okay, he said this was just a normal act of cutting of the labia just like they cut the umbilical cord at birth, but they don’t cut labia at birth because they are too small and tiny to be cut. After my father’s word, I was really convinced of my father being a professional district doctor.

It was finally time to ordain me into true womanhood, I had fear in me, but I had the urge to discover this cultural norm as well. Camped in a thick forest with about 12 elderly women, they lit a circular fire in the middle of the forest, and we were in the midst, we were all stripped naked and stood apart while smoke enticed our naked bodies, they called it preparation, the whole day these women kept telling us the good thing about this practice.

At dusk, they lay us down, legs wide apart, held side by side. My heart bled with panic. On the ground felt hopeless. Hot tears pricked my eyes, the next thing I felt were hands touching my vagina, a sharp cut and blood oozing out. I didn’t see any blood on the ground, it was all collected in pots. For months, I couldn’t wear underwear. Since then, I have felt less of a woman, with hunger and agony I have never forgotten that heartbreaking experience that changed the course of my life. Instead of asking God to take away the pain, I asked him to help me forgive the people who had hurt me, including my father.