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Success Story
Community welcomes girls into adulthood, leaving behind a traumatic tradition
Reaching Womanhood in a New Era
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Photo: Dan Cruan Selka, PACT
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Foibe and her mother are joining a new era of womanhood in Dodoma, Tanzania.
"I was slaughtered like a chicken and didn't want my daughter to go through the same,"
said Lucy.
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Fourteen-year-old Foibe walked proudly out of a red plastered hut, leading a line of other
girls to join a group of men, women and children in dance to celebrate their coming of age.
Adorned in their new black cotton robes, Foibe and her friends elegantly swung their heads and
shoulders, smiling shyly to the crowd.
Today, they have reason to smile. After seven intense days of training, the girls have officially
entered adulthood. More important, they have been spared the agony and trauma of female genital
mutilation that typically is a rite of passage for Gogo girls of Tanzania's Dodoma region.
Their parents decided instead to allow the community's respected elderly women to teach them
the traditions, practices and responsibilities of a Gogo woman.
"I feel very lucky today," said Foibe. "I have been spared all the pain which other girls
have gone through. I have heard the stories associated with cutting. I'm really happy I don't
have to go through it."
Genital mutilation is a brutal and unsanitary act that often results in infections, the transmission
of HIV/AIDS or death due to shock, hemorrhage or septicemia. USAID is working with Women Wake Up,
a Tanzanian organization, to end traditional practices that endanger the lives of women and children
by advocating and conducting information campaigns that employ songs, dances, videos, public meetings
and radio broadcasts.
After attending one of these meetings, a Gogo ngariba (the person who performs the mutilation) agreed to
try an initiation without cutting. The girls were trained away from their homes by elder women, and at
the end of the seventh day, the community came together to celebrate the successful transformation of
their daughters. "I'm happy we decided to include our daughter in the group," says Lucy, mother of
7-year-old Neema, who also was initiated. "I was slaughtered like a chicken, and I didn't want my daughter
to go through the same."
While female genital mutilation is illegal in many African countries, it often goes unreported and is
widely practiced in inaccessible villages and remote places. USAID and Women Wake Up hope to expand
their campaign to other areas where genital mutilations continue to destroy the lives of countless
girls and women.
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