Hibo Wardere had not been a teaching assistant at her youngest daughter’s primary school for very long when the headteacher asked her to sit in on a meeting. It was 2012, and a 10-year-old pupil, Halima, was about to be taken out of school and sent to Somalia. Wardere wasn’t sure why she had been asked to be there, other than the fact she had grown up in Somalia and might be able to persuade the parents to let their daughter stay at school. The thing the head suspected, and which soon became apparent to Wardere, was never mentioned – the fear that Halima would be subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) during this trip. The girl, and her parents, left the country and never returned. What the headteacher didn’t know at that point, but may have suspected, was that Wardere had also been a victim of FGM.
“I wish I’d been more vocal,” she says. “Had the courage to say: ‘You need to stop this.’” She had heard rumours in the London Somali community about girls going to be cut, “but I chose not to get involved with them. I knew that if I heard about it, it would drag my emotions up and I wasn’t ready to tackle that. I stayed away from the community and concentrated on raising my kids, being busy. Until that 10-year-old, I wasn’t ready to face what was happening here.”
We sit outside a cafe in Walthamstow, east London, near where Wardere lives and works as FGM mediator for the borough, educating police, social workers, healthcare professionals, teachers and children. The sun bounces off the sequins on her hijab; the effect is like bursts of red and gold fireworks going off around her face. Full story...
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“I wish I’d been more vocal,” she says. “Had the courage to say: ‘You need to stop this.’” She had heard rumours in the London Somali community about girls going to be cut, “but I chose not to get involved with them. I knew that if I heard about it, it would drag my emotions up and I wasn’t ready to tackle that. I stayed away from the community and concentrated on raising my kids, being busy. Until that 10-year-old, I wasn’t ready to face what was happening here.”
We sit outside a cafe in Walthamstow, east London, near where Wardere lives and works as FGM mediator for the borough, educating police, social workers, healthcare professionals, teachers and children. The sun bounces off the sequins on her hijab; the effect is like bursts of red and gold fireworks going off around her face. Full story...
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- 50 girls were taken from the UK to Somalia for female genital mutilation ...
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