Strangely enough after the surgery Rahwa already sounds a lot more empowered then previously.

“I have never been a feminist or fought for women’s right but your body is the only thing you have, it is something nature designed to be like that, I don’t see why we should destroy it in that way, I don’t see the rationale behind it. It is just…It is actually really stupid. It is just culture, a tradition, there is nothing in any religion that says you should sow a woman, there is just the way that society came into being. You study culture and you have to respect them but there needs to be a line. Someone that is a westerner they would have a problem with it, a westerner would point fingers and say ‘You know what, this is not right because this does not stand with the ideals in our society and blablabla’ but if you have had it done to you and you know how it makes you feel then those feelings are valid. I know how it makes you feel.”

So would you condemn them now?

“YES I would condemn them in the highest way possible. No one has the right to do that. Even on a religious way: if you know God why do you mess up his creation? You don’t need to touch that.”

And how about the other girls out there on the same situation you were:

“I think that girls who come with that to the western world, I can relate to that because I was once that number - you know I am just a number - I think we need a lot of support, it is different, the fight has gone to fighting it where it happens, where it is really hard, that everyone is forgetting about these numbers that are coming through to the western world the United states, Europe, Australasia, etc. They are there but they are not there, they are slowly coming out now, because they need to come out when they reach around my age they need to go to the gynaecologist because the pain is so bad and you don’t know what it is. And then the gynaecologist, the only thing they are equipped with in dealing with it is ‘oh yes it happens and you need to get this done’, but there is no support, there is no real research about it. I researched about it, but just those agency reports you know: scientific, just numbers.”

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