Anns story: These days it is not a must
Ann is 19 years old and in form four of high school. She dreams of becoming a lawyer one day, so she can fight for girls’ rights and speak out against FGM and early marriage. Her motivation comes from her own story – a story that could have looked very different if her mother had not fought fiercely for her.
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“I want other girls to know that these days circumcision and early marriage is not a must,” she says. “You can pursue a career and choose your own path. My story begins like this,” Ann explains. “I was nine years old, in grade 4. My father decided it was time for me to be circumcised and married off. He had found a very old man. But my mother was against it. She did not want my life to be like hers,” Ann says.
Ann’s mother knew the danger of FGM and the pain of being forced to marry a man you dislike, but the refusal made Ann’s father furious. “He planned the ceremony anyway and beat my mother, and harassed her, because she didn’t agree,” Ann says.
Ultimately, the night before the circumcision and marriage were to happen, they ran away – Ann, her mother and the five younger siblings. First to Anns grandmothers house where the uncles refused to help and tried to force them back.
“They said that if my mother refused my marriage, they could not give us anything. So, we went away and after that life was a struggle.”
Ann, her mother and the five younger siblings had to survive on their own. “We found a tiny room to rent. It was really small, and the floor was mud. We could go from morning to evening without eating and without money for school fees, we just stayed home.”
But one day the headteacher from the local school came to ask why the children were not in class. He knew Susan Kasero and how her organisation helped girls whose future was endangered by FGM and forced marriage. The Osiligi Girls Rescue Center didn’t exist yet, so Susan enrolled Ann at a boarding school at safe distance from her father’s community. Later, when Osiligi Girls Rescue Center opened, it became a place to belong and find the encouragement to follow her own path in life.
“A lot of things have changed. I have a lot more self-esteem. For many years, I was afraid of people thinking they were all there to take me by force to be circumcised and married off. But now I have courage.”
And one day, she wants to return to the community where she grew up to tell girls what she now knows: “That circumcision and early marriage is not a must. Those are just misconceptions. You can have a different life.”
(Ann is not her real name but a name she has chosen to remain in safety from her father and to keep her story private from peers and teachers at her new school.)