Monday, December 29, 2003

A Road Paved With Pledges and Pain: Student Built Alliances in Village to Reach an American College

Washington Post

This young woman's story is very interesting. A little exposure to the world energized her to make changes in the culturally-based practices of her small African hometown. More power to her. Disagree? Read this account of her circumcision:

"So one early morning in April 1994, Ntaiya entered the cow pen behind her house in the company of her 13-year-old sister, Nasieku, another young village woman and a grandmother with a knife. The girls had spent the previous week traveling through the village, blowing whistles and ringing bells to announce their upcoming initiation into adulthood, and the previous night singing and dancing in the Ntaiya home with all the neighbor women. And then, with what seemed like the entire village crowding in to watch, Ntaiya lifted her skirt and spread her legs and the grandmother grabbed her most intimate pieces of flesh and with a fast, deep, scooping slash tore them out.

What on earth must it have felt like?

'It's ridiculous,' Ntaiya says, with a distant, nervous laugh. 'Like torture.'"

The Prime Directive be damned.

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