Heartbreaking story dialogue on FGM, in Somali, Amaric and Swahili

FGM the main cause of FISTULA in Kenya , when FGM goes wrong.

PLEASE VOTE HELP ME END FGM.... http://www.startupnation.com/leading-moms-in-business/contestant/9343/index.php


FGM CAUSES A LIFE TIME OF PAIN ..NOT ALL WOMEN CHILDREN CAN ACCESS RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERIES.

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http://www.startupnation.com/leading-moms-in-business/contestant/9343/index.php


Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

IN KENYA Family cries out for justice over girl raped by Catholic priest:(

A Catholic priest has been accused of raping a schoolgirl only minutes after giving her bananas and oranges for her sick mother in hospital and praying for her. The priest, who was serving at Gekano Parish in Kisii Diocese in November last year when the incident reportedly occurred, then tried to swear the 16-year-old girl to secrecy with a promise of education.

A senior administrator in the diocese, also a priest, confirmed that a complaint had reached the bishop’s office over the matter, and said investigations were ongoing.

But the girl’s family suspects a cover-up plot, citing the fact that the accused priest has since been moved from the diocese and the conduct of another priest who later visited their home to collect the clothes worn by the girl at the time she was allegedly raped.

The family has also accused the police of inaction even though they reported the matter to the Keroka police station.

The Class Seven girl is said to have gone to the priest’s house to return the plastic bag in which she carried the fruit to her mother who was at St Elizabeth Gekano health centre about 70 metres from where he lived.

The woman had been admitted with malaria on November 23 last year, and her daughter was taking care of her.

The priest visited the sick woman to pray with her between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. the following day.

“After praying he asked me if I had taken any food, but I said that I had no appetite. He asked me if I would take some bananas and oranges.

“He said that he had some fruits in his house which he wished to give to me. I accepted. But the priest instructed my daughter to make sure that she returned the plastic bag,” the mother told the Sunday Nation this week.

“Within a short time the girl had brought a bunch of bananas and two oranges. I ate one and gave one to the nurse,” she said.

The mother of six said that after removing the fruit her daughter returned the bag to the priest’s house as instructed.

“She stayed there for long, and I started getting worried where she was. She was supposed to go home and prepare lunch for her siblings, and yet the keys for the house were on my bed,” the mother said.

“She did not come back and instead went straight home. In the evening I decided to leave hospital and go home and asked her why she returned without taking the keys, but she kept quiet.”

She said the following day her daughter opened up and told her what had happened.

“While in the house he asked me why my parents were always fighting, but I kept quiet,” the girls said. “He then asked me to allow him touch my breast, but I declined again as I got frightened.”

Warned her

She said the priest forced himself on her, tore her clothes and then defiled her. The girl said the priest then promised to assist her to pursue her education and warned her not to disclose to any person what happened as people would laugh at him.

Veronica Ogato, a nurse at the health centre, said she, too, suspected that something bad had happened. She recalled that when the priest came she was attending to the mother of the victim.

“He came in, greeted us all and prayed, then he left with the girl,” she said. The nurse said she grew worried when the girl stayed for long in the priest’s house as the mother was complaining.
“I later saw the girl seated next to the fence of the church in tattered clothes, using her sweater to cover her torn clothes. I sensed that something must have gone wrong,” Ms Ogato said.
“She looked depressed and stressed, but I did not tell the sick mother,” she said. “At 4 p.m. I passed by her parents’ place and asked to be allowed to talk to her. I came with her to my house and persuaded her to tell me what happened. She opened up and narrated to me what had happened.”

She said the girl told her that a “bad man” had torn her clothes off and defiled her. The priest then gave her Sh100 as a bribe to silence, her but she refused to take it.

“As a nurse, the following day I decided to give her an injection so that she did not conceive as it was three days after her monthly period,” Ms Ogato said.

The family said the girl at one time even attempted suicide after her schoolmates began to tease her. The parents moved her to a different school. The family has also become the laughing stock of the village, mocked by villagers who accuse them of “exchanging their daughter for a bunch of bananas and two oranges”. The mother said that a day after the rape, the suspected priest visited her home, prayed for her and gave her the sacrament.

On November 26, the girl’s mother claimed that Father Zachary Bikeri, the priest in charge of Gekano Parish, visited their home to purportedly ask for forgiveness over the incident on behalf of the priest.

“We prayed together, and after prayers he had a written statement which he asked my husband, daughter and me to append our signature to. The statement said the church was going to act on the allegations, and so we obliged.

“He then took the clothes that my daughter had worn when the incident occurred to take to the bishop so appropriate action could be taken against the priest,” the mother said.

Delayed to report

She said they believed that justice would be done and that was why they did not report the matter to police.

The girl’s mother said when she threatened to raise the alarm, her daughter’s clothes were returned to her on April 12, but they had been cleaned.

The Sunday Nation made several attempts to obtain a comment by phone from the accused priest on June 11 but without success. “I am on the road and will call you back ... I will call you back please,” he said and then switched off his phone.

Fr Bikeri told the Sunday Nation that he could only talk to the girl’s father.

“As you can see I am attending to another visitor, and you will have to wait or else you come another day,” Fr Bikeri said and then went back to his house.

Father Jeremiah Nyakundi, the administrator who is third in line in the Kisii Catholic Diocese, admitted that the complaint had reached the bishop’s office.

“We received the complaint about the defilement in December last year, and it was that time that the priest was moved in order to allow for investigations to go on,” Fr Nyakundi said.

However, Father Nyakundi said only the Kisii Catholic Diocese Bishop Joseph Mairura was in a position to tell how far the investigations had gone.

“What I can confirm is that the priest is not in Kisii diocese as he was moved, and it is my hope that the case will be completed, but at the moment it is still an allegation,” Fr Nyakundi said.

The bishop was out of office when we tried to contact him. The victim’s father says he unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Bishop Mairura in January.

“On January 18, 2010, I went to see him but he did not meet me. I was told that he was busy, and I had to leave,” the father said. Keroka police boss Ramson Lolmodoni said they did not know about the incident.

“I have tried to search for the case in our occurrence books, but I am unable to get it; even if he had reported, it was too late as we could not act,” Mr Lolmodoni said.The girl’s father is bitter about the leadership of the church which he accuses of abandoning his daughter and protecting the priest.

“She was tormented, and we have not been able to get her professional counselling services due to lack of resources. This is the question I have been asking the leadership of the church: why are they doing this to us?” he said.

On March 11 this year, the victim’s father went to local chief Jane Matara to report the incident. She advised him to report it to the police.

He said he went to Keroka police station on March 29 to report the matter, but the area OCS told him that it was too late to act on the case. “He (the accused priest) has been calling us and promising that he would pay for the education of our daughter in a boarding school provided we did not report the matter.”

“And at the same time, we were to tell the bishop that all the allegations against him were lies so that he could compensate us, which we have declined,” the victim’s father said.:(
I SAY THIS RAPIST SHOULD GO TO JAIL!! WHAT MAKES HIM THINK RAPING A GIRL AFTER OFFERING TWO ORANGES AND BANANAS AND HIS FILTHY PRAYERS HE HAS THE RIGHT TO RAPE AND ROB THE BABY GIRL CHILDHOOD? AND THE SHAMELESS SELFISH DEMON DARES CALLING AND SHOWING UP AND PROMISING TO BUY THE SILENCE WITH EDUCATION?
THE OCS AT Keroka police station SHAME ON YOU FOR SAYING IT IS TOO LATE TO TAKE ACTION AGAINST THIS PIG!!!! LOCK HIM UP!!!!!! I AM TIRED THAT ANY MAN CAN BUY THEIR WAY OUT AFTER SUCH AN ACT OF VIOLENCE!!!

Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

FGM Charities targeting Africans have questionable motives..story by Nation newspaper.

First, they came for our babies. Now, they want to adopt African women’s private parts. Yes, a charity based in the United States wants you to “adopt a clitoris”.

Clitoraid claims to help victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Burkina Faso by funding a “Pleasure Hospital” in this West African country that will surgically rebuild women’s “organs of pleasure”. Its spiritual leader, who goes by the name Prophet Rael, says that he founded the private non-profit organisation to help as many circumcised women as possible to “be whole again”.

Clitoraid is getting support from various US-based organisations, including those purporting to be feminist. (Interestingly, the government of Burkina Faso has already been performing these reconstruction surgeries for free.)

Now no-one can deny that FGM has had a devastating physical and emotional effect on millions of girls and women in Africa. Study upon study has shown that FGM — in all its forms — cripples women physically, makes childbirth and sex extremely painful and leaves lasting scars on women’s psyches. It cannot be tolerated or encouraged in this day and age.

So why is this organisation and its advocates receiving so much flak from none other than African women themselves?

In a blog posting titled “Can? We? Save? Africa?”, San Francisco-based Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg explains: “For years now, African women have been complaining that even as we are engaged in domestic campaigns to end the practice of female circumcision within our communities, the eager participation by Westerners, particularly Western feminists, has done much more harm than good.

“In a nutshell, Western feminists have taken over the space, displaced African women’s voices on the issue and have carelessly thrown about their neo-colonial weight in ways that have served only to further entrench the issue.”

Kamau-Rutenberg has now started a campaign that questions the motives of Clitoraid and other campaigns like it, including one called Underwear for Africa that targets orphans in Kenya.

Started in 2007 by the US-based charity Mothers Fighting for Others, the campaign aims to collect underwear for distribution to Kenyan orphanages, IDP camps and such places where underwear is apparently in short supply.

The organisation claims to have donated 2,000 pairs of underwear to children living in two IDP camps in Kenya in April 2009. A noble gesture, but why does it bother so many Africans?

“PART OF THE PROBLEM WITH PHILANTHROPY towards Africa is that of ease,” explains Kamua-Rutenberg, who as head of a non-profit organisation in the US says she keeps running into well-meaning but completely off-the-mark efforts to “save” Africa. Unfortunately, the devil is always in the details. In the rush to simplify complex situations such as the one in Darfur, we lose understanding of historical context and how that impacts what is currently happening.”

Central to the debate is the question of dignity. If African women’s body parts can be appropriated — or “adopted” — by well-intentioned, albeit ignorant, Westerners, then what will be appropriated next? If they can adopt our bodies, what’s stopping them from “adopting” entire nations?

A case in point is the singer Madonna’s relentless campaign to adopt Malawian children even in the face of opposition from the parents of the children themselves.

James Kambewa, a security guard in South Africa and the father of five-year old girl Mercy, is challenging Madonna’s right to keep his daughter, but admits that he does not have the kind of money to hire a lawyer who will take Madonna to court. Are his rights and dignity worth less than hers because he is poor?

Recently, at the Pan-African Media Conference, Prof Guy Berger from South Africa argued that Africa’s negative image in the international media will only be fixed if the reality of Africa is fixed first. In other words, when African countries become wealthy, well-functioning societies, the international media will have no choice but to focus on the positive.

I beg to differ. In the last few years, African countries, including conflict-ravaged Sudan and Ethiopia, have enjoyed double-digit economic growth rates, but one would never know it by looking at images of these countries in the international media, where war, witchcraft, poverty and famine in Africa make more headlines than thriving economies.

Perhaps the question we should be asking is: Who is saving who? In his book The Road to Hell, Micheal Maren writes: “The starving African exists as a point in space from which we measure our (Westerners’) own wealth, success, and prosperity, a darkness against which we can view our own cultural triumphs...

“The belief that we can help is an affirmation of our own worth in the grand scheme of things… And it is in their (Africans’) helplessness that they become a marketable commodity.”

Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

Doctor invents female condom with 'teeth' STOPPING RAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Few dare confront it, yet the violating act of rape is still very much an aspect of every society. But for one South African doctor, something needed to be done — and fast — to stem the menace after her encounter with a rape victim.

She invented female condoms with “teeth”. Four decades ago when Dr Sonnet Ehlers was reportedly on call at night, a devastated rape victim was brought in.

Eyes lifeless

“Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse. She looked at me and said, ‘If only I had teeth down there,’” recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. It was then that Dr Sonnet decided someday, she would come up with something to help fight rape, according to CNN.

Forty years down the line, she came up with a unique solution, worn by women like tampons — the Rape-aXe. The device can only be surgically removed once it has lodged itself on the male genital, which will result in positive identification of the attacker and subsequent arrest.

The rapist in question will not be able to walk right or even urinate due to constant pain. If he tries getting rid of it, it will only get a tighter grip. However, the condom will not cause any serious harm like breaking the skin or giving way to the danger of any fluid exposure.

Dr Sonnet went a step further and consulted “engineers, gynaecologists and psychologists” to help make the design safe and not subject victims to HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

The anti-rape condom is now undergoing a trial period in South Africa, where it is distributed free to women, especially during the Fifa World Cup. Once the trial is over, it will be available on the market for $2.20 (Sh170).

So will the razor sharp condom be the answer to rapists? Perhaps in South Africa, which according to Human Rights Watch has one of the highest incidence of rape in the world. A 2009 report by the country’s Medical Research Council found that 28 per cent of men surveyed had raped a woman or girl, with one in 20 saying they had raped in the past year.

Some people see Dr Sonnet’s innovation as welcome, since women have always taken drastic steps to ward off rape. However, critics are accusing Dr Sonnet of developing a medieval weapon in fighting rape.

They are asserting that the device will only incite more violence against women since a man subjected to great pain might easily kill the woman wearing it, adding that the act of wearing the condom in anticipation of being assaulted represents enslavement that no woman should be subjected to.

Ms Rosemary Okello, the director of African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWC), a non-governmental organisation based in Nairobi, seems to agree. Speaking to the Nation Media Group’s online publication, Africa Review, Ms Okello says “medical invention cannot be used to tackle a social problem”, since this will not address say, sexual harassment.

Then there are all those babies who are subjected to rape, but are still too young to wear the condom. Ms Okello added that although the device had been developed in good faith, it was still gender and age biased. “What about men who are also victims of rape, and how many women will have access to it?” she asked.

Like other lobbyists, she is instead rooting for more preventative and educational measures for both men and women, aimed at stopping sexual assault in the first place. At the World Cup, the world is watching to see if rapists will be deterred.
Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

It is called Female Genital Mutilation not female genital cutting!!

As a survivor of this atrocity I am mad as hell for the organisations ,individuals who have never been through this terror bringing up the theory of lessening MUTILATION to cutting.
For instance you can never belittle RAPE to forced sex to please the RAPISTS and work with them..I say send the rapists and mutilators to JAIL or HELL!!! Stop using FGM for publicity and donations at the expense of 300 million survivors and millions of victims murdered every year...Then you try to convince me with your intact genitals you know better about the hell we have gone through and still live with it every single day!!!!! while 200 of us bleed to death every day and you dare say it is cutting? SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
All I know is FGM as a form of sex discrimination and gender-based violence performed to control women's sexuality, ensure virginity until marriage, and guarantee their acceptance into a particular community. A 2008 statement on FGM adopted by 10 prominent UN agencies
clearly states that,
the guiding principles for considering genital practices as FGM should be those of human rights, including the right to health, the rights of children and the right to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex."
Let there be no lighter misinterpreted version for any organisation, movement, culture, religion, country or individual to misconstrue FGM's harmful face of atrocity.
Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

LONG LIVE AFRIKA. WORLD CUP 2010 Zangalewa

The death of Nelson Mandela’s great-granddaughter cast a shadow over the opening day of the World Cup on Friday, dampening the spirits of a nation proud and excited to be hosting the world’s most popular sporting event.

Zenani Mandela, 13, was killed in a car accident on the way home from a World Cup concert in Soweto on Thursday night, where tens of thousands of people had sung and danced with headline music stars Shakira and the Black Eyed Peas.


REST IN PEACE SWEETHEART GONE TOO SOON:(
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4768606&id=608286318

Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415