Aisha, 33
"What I vividly remember is my sister and I were playing, and a woman came and took us. This was in The Gambia, and I was 6 and my sister was 3 at the time. This woman was known in the village, and she told us she was taking us somewhere to see something. Like little kids do, we tagged along. We went into a home, and immediately women grabbed and blindfolded us and tied us to some thick bushes.
I could smell the leaves, the dirt, everything around us. I knew we were no longer in a home setting, but outside somewhere. There was loud drumming and older women were singing songs, which I was too young to understand. I could hear other kids crying out in pain, but I didn't know why.
I was dragged to a fence covered in leaves, and they took the blindfold off. I could see the other girls bleeding and sobbing in pain. I saw an old woman holding a knife so sharp I could see the drops of blood sliding down the edge. It was the blood of the other girls.
Three other women were holding down my arms and legs, and another was sitting right on my chest, covering my mouth. They try to put pressure on you, so you don't cry for the next girl to hear. I can still feel the weight of her today. I can still visualize all their faces as I talk about this. I can see what each one of them looks like and the emotions that they had — so empty, like they didn't see me as a human being.
The cutting happens very fast. What the cutter does is hold on to your clitoris to make sure she gets that and scrapes everything else that comes along with it — all of the labia, if they can. I fought the whole time, and as a result, only my clitoris and part of my left labia are cut. The other side is still intact. My mother told me recently that when this happens they will often wait until the girl has a child. Then they will finish the job, cutting everything off they didn't get the first time.
After all the girls in my group were cut, we were left to bleed into little dirt holes for hours. Finally, when it became dark, we were taken to the home of the woman who did the cutting and crowded into one room to heal. We were there three months. We ate out of one shared bowl.
In the morning, we would wake up, line up, and receive our "treatment." They took dried leaves and placed them on the wound and that would stay on for two to three days. Then they would rip it off and put another one on until the tissue began to scar. Every morning a woman came in to teach us songs, and if we didn't memorize the words, she would beat us. We were also taught, every day, that if we ever talked about this, if we even mentioned it, they would kill us.
I became friends with these girls. We bonded and ended up going to school together. I learned two of them later died in childbirth, which was too difficult for them because of FGM. They bled to death.
At the end of the three months, there was a ceremony to celebrate that we had gone through the rite of passage. My mother came to pick us up, and I kept asking, "Why did they do this to me? Where were you?"
She just responded, "They told you not to say anything, right? Then don't talk about it." I never got an explanation until years later. I work in health care now, and I have so many questions about my health that has to do with something so significant regarding my genitalia. "