Jaha's Promise (2017) - full transcript
A documentary about the life and activism of Jaha Dukureh, a Gambian anti-female genital mutilation campaigner who returns to her country of birth to confront the harmful tradition that she and 200 million women and girls have undergone globally.
(birds chirping)
- Khadija, Khadija!
(child laughs)
I didn't know I was mutilated
as a baby until I was 15.
My clitoris was cut off
when I was a week old,
and this is something
that happens
to nearly all the
girls in The Gambia.
It's called female
genital mutilation.
When I was 15, I was
brought to America
to marry an older man.
When he tried to
have sex with me,
that's when I realized what
female genital mutilation was,
and that's when
my horror started.
⪠La, la, la, la
⪠La, la
⪠La, la, la
⪠Oh, Da da do all day
- When Khadija was
born, I knew that
I could never let
this happen to her.
I knew that I had to do
something to stop it.
(dramatic music)
(intense music)
Most of the girls
and women you see
on the streets have been cut.
Their clitoris was
cut off, or worse.
This has been going on
for thousands of years.
I've come home to try and
do something to end it.
Even if that means
taking on my family,
my tribe, and the
whole of Gambia.
So what do you guys think about
when it comes to
the issue of FGM?
- That we should not stop it.
- (Jaha) You don't think
we should stop FGM?
- No please,
we shouldn't stop it.
- Do you want your wife
to not have any desire?
Or you want her to fully
enjoy what you're enjoying?
- It's a conversation
normally came in
to stop that too much of
feeling they might is having.
- It's natural, God gave
it to her, why stop it?
I don't need to cut my
daughter's body parts
to make her, you
know, stay calm,
to make her stay a virgin, no.
You need to protect your
daughters, don't mutilate them.
It's not helping them.
Like, I've been through it.
It didn't help me.
(upbeat music)
This is the house I grew up in.
We lived in one
apartment with my mom,
and then my stepmom lived
in the other apartment.
My family in The Gambia
we are Serahules.
(speaking foreign language)
When I was growing up,
my dad had three wives,
and he has a lot of kids.
You know, the number
of siblings I have,
I think at least 30 of us.
Okay, the youngest ones,
I really can't name.
Have to call them and
be like, who's your mom.
So it's like,
I mean, I have a
lot of siblings.
This is where the
mosque begins at.
My father is an imam,
and he built the mosque
behind our family home.
He boasts when it
comes to his kids,
especially his daughters.
None of them dishonored him
by getting pregnant
before marriage.
All of them were virgins.
The fact that my dad had
other wives, and other kids,
I hated it more than my mom did.
You know, as a child,
you were jealous,
'cause you wanted
to be the only ones.
And every time he was
away, you felt like
they were taking time from you,
and they were taking
time from your mom.
(speaking foreign language)
So you'd just look
at her and know
that she didn't feel
happy sharing her husband.
(singing in foreign language)
it was very much a
Serahule tradition that
women didn't get educated.
(speaking foreign language)
Me and my sister, we
were the first girls
in our family to be
enrolled in school.
My mom felt like it
was very important,
even though my dad
was against it.
She was very strict,
but with me she was lenient.
And when I come home
and say, I would never
marry a guy that
has another wife,
I would never let
my husband hit me,
she just used to sit and laugh.
(speaking foreign language)
When I was eight years old,
my marriage was arranged
to a guy that lived in New York.
My bride price was paid.
I wasn't eligible
to live with him,
because I was still
very, very young.
When I hit puberty,
that was when
I was going to be
eligible to get married.
As Serahule girl, it's
not abnormal for us
to have our marriages arranged
when we are very, very young.
If you are actually over 18,
and you don't have a husband,
people think that you're
expired in some kind of way,
so that's a problem.
When I was about
13, my mom found out
that she had breast cancer.
I remember being in
a hospital with her
when the doctors told her that
she only had a few months.
She looked at me and said,
"Don't listen, they're not God.
"That's not going to happen.
"They're lying."
It was hard to let go,
'cause we were very close.
(somber music)
Gambissara's the most
conservative, hard line,
and hostile place that you
can go and talk about FGM.
It is a village that
has 100% of women cut.
It's where my family is from.
This is Gambissara.
When I was young, I would spend
the whole Summer there
and going to the farms.
(speaking foreign language)
And I haven't been back
since my mother passed away.
The whole village came out.
It blew me away, 'cause
I wasn't expecting that,
and knowing that I came
here to discuss FGM.
(speaking foreign language)
(singing in foreign language)
- [Crew Member]
Jaha, are you okay?
- This is my mom's home.
That was the last place
that I saw my mom alive.
The last place that
I heard her laugh.
(speaking foreign language)
This was the first
time there was
ever an open debate about FGM,
and it was really,
really amazing.
(speaking foreign language)
For women like her, they have
never seen an uncut woman.
They don't know any other way.
(speaking foreign language)
The lack of basic health care
is a huge contributor
to the issue of FGM.
You know, Gambissara doesn't
even have a good hospital.
(speaking foreign language)
We live in a society
wherein women are made
to believe that, you know, you
have to bow down to your man.
Men tell women, we
want our daughters cut,
and they cut them.
My aunt, my sisters told me
that this is how we lived.
I should have never been taught
to accept those kind of things.
(somber music)
When I was 15, I was brought
to America by my dad,
to get married to the guy
that I was promised to.
He was in his forties.
I arrive in New York
on Christmas Day.
My husband was at the
airport to pick me up.
He wanted to touch
me, and hug me and
I didn't want him touching
me, and I kept hitting him.
Soon as I get to my
aunt and uncle's house,
there was people, there was
cooking, there was everything.
And I knew that that was it.
The night of the marriage,
they had an older woman,
kind of like a sex advisor,
that would tell you
about what to do.
You know, this is the position
to make it more comfortable,
or this is the products
that you can use
to kind of lessen the pain.
This woman actually bathes you.
She rubbed perfume,
lotion all over me.
And they dressed me.
They made me wear
white lingerie.
They made me wear
these waist beads.
I told my dad that I
didn't want to get married.
I begged, I pleaded,
I did everything
to just ask him not to
make me go through this.
They took me to his house.
When I got there, they
took me inside the room.
They have this tradition
of making you kneel
to your husband.
Then they left me there
by myself with him.
I cried the whole time.
I cried for my
mom, and felt like
she could have been here,
she would have saved me.
I was having pain, and
difficulties with sex.
And he couldn't
really penetrate me.
After days of trying to have
sex, and not being able to,
they said, maybe
she's infibulated.
In my tribe, we are mutilated
when we are about a week old.
The clitoris is cut,
as well as the labia,
and the vagina is sealed,
leaving only a tiny hole.
When you're infibulated,
you can't really have sex
until you're cut back open.
That's when they
decided to take me
to a doctor in downtown
Manhattan to be reopened.
I don't know what he used,
but it was like a gel,
and then he did what he did.
It was painful.
And this doctor told
me I had to have sex
right away in order
to keep it open.
That's when I
realized what it meant
to be infibulated, and
what FGM actually means.
It's just something that
women never talk about.
You know, they never talked
to me about the pain.
They don't tell you that sex
is going to hurt forever.
This is not a
conversation that we have.
We have a cultural silence.
You know, FGM is a practice
that you can't reverse.
Once a girl has gone
through, is a practice
that they live with for
the rest of their lives.
But when I got married,
because I was infibulated,
if you know what
infibulation is,
literally, you can't have
sex until they reopen you.
And when you're also
delivering your baby,
I have three kids, but each
time I deliver my babies,
they literally have
to cut me open.
And that's because
I've bene through FGM.
- Is it really true that it
will reduce sexual desire?
- The clitoris of a woman is
sensual part of a woman's body.
That's how you feel, that's
what makes you gain pleasure.
When that clitoris is cut off,
you don't get that feeling.
Every time your husband
is having sex with you,
when he's enjoying it, you
are laying there in pain,
and that's not fair to women.
- Isn't it sunna?
- [Jaha] FGM is not sunna.
- But I have lived where
it is that FGM is sunna.
- The Prophet does not condone
violence against women,
and FGM is actually
violence against women.
- Thank you.
(pensive music)
- After she got
married, we would call
each other all the time.
While she was there,
it was constant crying.
She was 15, and she was
expect to be a wife.
The guy would threaten
her with violence.
It was just awful for her.
- Being forced into a
marriage is one of the hardest
things that you can
ever go through,
because to me, it's like rape.
You just can't tell
me anything else.
When you force the
girl into a marriage,
you've given someone the right
to rape here every single day.
No one in my family
would listen to me.
They thought it was normal.
And then someone that
knew my situation
called this woman
who was leading
the international human rights
organization, Equality Now.
That's when Taina Bien-Aime
came into my life,
and showed me that
it wasn't normal.
It wasn't okay.
- I kept telling her,
if you can escape,
there is a police
station down your block,
or come to the office,
or come to my home.
It was an emotional tug-of-war
that she was going through.
How can I extricate
myself from this violence
without totally
divorcing from my family,
or without turning my
back on everything I know?
(gentle music)
- It got to a point where,
and it was so bad that, I
just was like, you know what?
I have to leave.
- She called her father, and
told him that she had been
in touch with women's
rights organizations.
And I don't know whether
there was a fear there
that they could be
reported, but he allowed her
to leave the apartment
to live with his brother
a few blocks away,
still in the Bronx.
- It was like a sense of
relief when I found out
that Jaha had left
that marriage.
All she could think of was like
how she could get
back into school.
- I was living with
my aunt and uncle.
My aunt didn't think I
needed to go to school,
so she didn't help
me find school.
I went around at least
10 different schools
in the Bronx, and
they wouldn't take me
because I didn't have
a guardian with me.
Finally, I went to Taft,
and they enrolled me.
(children singing
in foreign language)
⪠Freedom and peace each day
(speaking foreign language)
- The root cause of FGM and
issues like child marriage
is also because of
the lack of education.
(speaking foreign language)
- Jaha comes from
an ethnic group that
does not believe in
girls' education.
The average age of
marriage is 14 years old.
Just bucking that
tradition alone
made her somewhat of a pariah.
- After my marriage ended,
people made my life hell.
I didn't want them looking at me
like I brought
shame on my family.
My aunt, she'll be
talking to her friends,
and they said, she's
this washed up girl
that has already had sex,
she's not a virgin anymore.
No one wants her.
And I would be in
the room, listening
to what they were
saying, and it killed me,
because I was, you
know, it's not like
they said it behind my back.
I was right there.
- At one point, Jaha
got so miserable that,
instead of going home at night,
she would sleep in the
subway 'til morning
before she would get off
the subway and go to school.
- I was fighting everything.
I was fighting to survive.
I was fighting to
get an education.
And most importantly,
I was fighting
to be who I wanted to be.
- When a human being suffers
severe trauma, like Jaha,
and then being in an environment
where she was not supported,
she was in trouble.
She was in deep trouble.
(tense music)
I received a call telling me
that Jaha was in the hospital.
She was at St. Vincent's, and
she had attempted suicide.
- I had enough, and I
would have rather died
than going back to what
they wanted me to be.
Taina was there a lot.
She brought me books.
She made me believe in myself.
She made me feel that my
life wasn't worthless.
When I left the hospital,
I realized that I needed
to get away from the Bronx.
- And that's when she told
me that I'm done fighting.
All she wanted at this
point was to just get out.
The only way that she
knew how, to just get out,
was to just let them arrange
a second marriage for her.
- I told my dad,
regardless of what happens,
I will stay in the
marriage, and he called me
and told me that my
marriage was fixed,
and then I'm moving to Atlanta.
So, at 17, I ended up remarried.
- I felt like it was rushed.
She was still pretty traumatized
from the first marriage.
I didn't want her to go through
with the second marriage at all.
But at that point, she just
wanted to leave New York,
and everything that had
occurred in New York behind her.
(cheerful music)
- My husband, Hagie,
he was more open than
the first marriage.
He was more open to my ideas.
He wasn't in the business
of controlling me.
Daddy's gonna go make you food.
Come on, go with daddy.
- [Hagie] Come on, now.
- We started a family.
First, I got pregnant
with my son, Mohammed.
Then I got pregnant
again with Khadija.
- Mommy
- Uh-huh.
- [Khadija] I'm a
beautiful mermaid.
- [Jaha] Yes, you
look beautiful.
You look more than beautiful.
- Hey you do this one.
- Ah, you messed up my jack!
- I did.
- And then I had
my little boy, Abu.
Abu!
(Abu squeals and laughs)
Give it hear, mwah.
Okay, you go night night?
After Khadija, I started working
for Wells Fargo as
a part-time teller.
You want to be like
Mommy when you grow up?
Really?
- Khadija.
- Yeah.
- Are you behaving
- Yes.
- while Mommy gets dressed up?
I went to Atlanta to visit Jaha.
Do you want to be
awesome like your mommy?
She was able to
work at the bank,
being a wife, being a mom,
and she was great at it.
I was like, seems like you did
make the right
decision after all.
⪠Da da da da da
⪠Dada dada dada dada da
(applause)
(gentle music)
- I remember being
at work and talking
with some of my friends
about their relationships.
You know, at that
point, then you realize,
okay, am I missing something?
Because the things
they are talking about
is not the things that
you're experiencing.
I thought sex was just painful
with my first marriage,
but then when I got
married the second time,
it was the same story.
Then I started talking to
other girls that are African,
that have been through FGM,
and I realized that
they were all feeling
the same thing
that I was feeling.
So it just made me
want to research.
Trying to find answers.
Trying to understand
my own body.
You know, how can I enjoy sex?
How can I reverse this?
Once I found out that
this was permanent,
it just kind of made me,
something has to change.
And I started contacting imams,
and I asked them, is FGM
a religious obligation?
And where in the
Quran is that lesson?
And then they can't
answer that question.
Islam has nothing
to do with FGM.
It made me realize that I
needed to tell people the truth
that this is not a
religious obligation.
It was just, people's selfish
need to control women.
I came up with the idea
of me starting a blog.
Just started talking
about my own experience.
Eventually, that kind of
evolved to Safe Hands for Girls.
Are you guys ready?
- Go.
- Woo.
- A survival led
organization against FGM.
I was able to get
other girls to join me.
(group applauds)
Okay, come on in.
Girls that have
been through FGM.
We want to be the big
sisters in your life,
whatever questions that you
have, we are here for you.
(speaking foreign language)
Women that are here
in the United States
that have been cut,
no one is trying to
answer their questions.
When they go to the doctor,
they are looked at
like a freak show.
This is somewhere
that you can come to,
without being afraid,
without being ashamed.
Because I'm trying to
get us to break the cycle
of abuse from the
past generation.
(upbeat music)
- Hi, a butterfly.
- Do we see a butterfly?
- I love butterflies.
- I'm gonna see him
when I get home.
- Me having a daughter was like,
you can't say this can't
happen to my daughter,
and then watch other people's
daughters go through it.
You guys can play.
Me and Auntie Naima
can sit and chat.
Naima was one of the
women who got involved
in Safe Hands with me early on.
Her name is hot.
- [Naima] I know.
- [Jaha] Come sit
next to Auntie Naima.
- Come and sit
here for a second.
I think so, her hair's
all flat in the back.
I was born in Nairobi, Kenya.
FGM is something that's a
big part of our culture.
It's a right of passage.
For my mother,
that's a gift to me.
Something that would help
me get into womanhood.
Let me know if it hurts, okay?
It happens between the
ages of five and nine.
For me, it happened
about nine years old.
It's gonna be very fast.
- Okay.
- I actually looked
forward to it.
This is something that
happens to all the girls.
You get gifts, there's a party.
On the day of my cutting, my
mother led me to the room.
All her friends and neighbors
were sitting there waiting.
The cutter hadn't shown up yet.
I volunteered to go get her,
and I held her hand as
we walked up the hill.
Little did I know, these
were the same hands
that were going to violate me.
I was brought into the
room and told to sit down.
I could feel the cold
cement underneath me.
All the kids were out playing,
and I could hear the chatter.
(children speaking in
a foreign language)
The cutter sat in front of
me, and picked up the razor.
I started calling out for my
mom, and I started to struggle.
And then at that point,
the other two women
on either side of me
then held my legs down
and my shoulders back, where
I couldn't move at all.
But I fought, I fought hard.
I could feel the blade cutting,
and blood just gushing out,
and just the pain,
I can't explain.
(somber music)
After it happened,
everything was different.
I was a pretty much
straight A student.
That went downhill.
- [Khadija] I'm hot.
- You're hot?
- Yeah, but she's trying to
take off her shirt also, no.
- You can't take off your
shirt, though, you're a girl.
Come around.
It sucks, I know,
it's not a nice rule.
- I'm gonna go
play with the dog.
- I know for a
fact that there is
longterm effects as far as PTSD,
and also girls and
women being more docile.
- [Jaha] You got it?
- [Mohammed] All right,
let's count the steps.
- When we first started
Safe Hands for Girls,
it was more to provide
support to FGM survivors.
How many daughters do you have?
- [Mother] Two.
- But then, I found out that
it was bigger than that.
And what do you think
will happen to them
if you do end up taking
them back to Gambia?
- Same thing that
happened to me.
They gonna get mutilated.
- There's also something
called vacation cutting,
where girls are sent to their
parents' home countries,
and they go through the FGM,
and then they come back
to the United States.
Is that the reason why you've
been afraid to go back home.
- [Mother] Yeah.
- There's no reason
why children born
here in the United
States should be
at risk of something like FGM.
- Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.
Tonight is dedicated to
Safe Hands for Girls.
(audience applauds)
- The best thing that we
have is our own voices.
I urge all of you
to not stay silent,
'cause whether you've
been through FGM or not,
you know someone in
our community that
has been through FGM.
It is a moral
obligation for all of us
to stand up and say,
enough is enough,
and we have to end this.
(audience applauds)
- [Audience Member] Good
job, good job, good job.
- Mother, I draw
breath from you.
I have lived in you,
loved for you, loved just you.
But my love is that.
The first time I talked
about FGM, I felt exposed.
I felt vulnerable, like I
had just laid my soul bare.
They took from me my humanhood.
Promised me womanhood.
Left me with no clitoral
hood, no clitoris.
It's such a taboo back home to
talk about it, it felt weird.
You have rearranged me.
Barred my sexuality,
shaved away these lips.
Ground zero barren land.
It's something that happened
to me, and it's hard for
me to talk about it, but
I think it's necessary.
I do not blame you for it.
You never knew better.
It is up to us to speak up.
Be someone's voice.
Hold someone's hand.
It is up to us to
end this practice.
(audience applauds)
(calm music)
(children shouting)
- Then I saw a news
article from the UK.
They did this petition there,
and as a result, the
Education Minister was writing
to all the schools, to set up
guidelines to deal with FGM.
I thought, what an amazing idea.
And I was like, I can
do this in the US.
Abu, you kicked me again.
Me and you gonna
have real problems.
I wrote a petition.
I wanted the Obama
Administration
to conduct a study on
FGM in the United States.
(upbeat music)
- Here Mommy, here Mommy.
- Okay.
I started Tweeting about it.
I started looking for
people to support the idea.
- [Man] What's it?
- It's a survey about FGM.
- [Man] What's FGM?
- Female genital mutilation.
- Oh, okay.
- And then Equality Now decided
to add their name
to the petition.
The Guardian also came on board.
- We as a paper have committed
to an international
campaign to eradicate FGM.
- Slavery was a culture in
America for over 300 years,
and if culture triggers
human rights violation,
then that piece of
culture must go.
and help us end FGM
in the United States.
When The Guardian came on board,
the numbers started going up.
We went from 10 signatures a day
to thousands of
signatures a day.
We just passed 83,000,
that's amazing.
We started getting more
exposure with the media.
That just helped us take
it to a whole new level.
People will think
your mom is right,
and Obama needs to do something.
- Female genital
mutilation is barbaric,
and should be eliminated.
- This shows that ordinary
people can believe
in something and make a
difference, and make a change.
All it takes is passion.
I was still working at the bank.
I decided to take
a leave of absence
'til things cool down a bit.
But things didn't cool
down, they escalated.
(audience applauds)
when we say that we want
to end FGM in a generation,
we need to make sure that
we are actually doing that.
Foot binding actually took
10 years to end in China,
but I believe if
we really push it,
we can end FGM in 10
years, just like they did
with foot binding
in China, thank you.
(audience applauds)
- And I hope that you
will continue to mobilize
the public, the whole community.
- I hope you will
continue using your power
to influence more world
leaders to take action.
- You can count on the
United Nations, thank you.
- I'm gonna take a
selfie, if that's fine.
- Okay, yes. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
- Okay.
- Hey. (laughs)
Abu, okay.
- You want to see my
eyes directly, huh?
Okay.
- Say bye, aw, thank you.
- Okay, all the best to you.
- Thank you sir, thank you.
- Yay! (laughs)
Abu, you met Ban
Ki-moon, give me five.
High five.
(fast, cheerful music)
The Girl Summit is the
international summit
that focuses on forced
marriage and FGM.
- How can we understand this
practice so that we can end it?
- We have to know how
they feel about the issue.
I didn't go through
FGM out of hate.
I didn't go through
FGM out of torture.
You know, even with
my early marriage,
I've never seen it
from a place of hate.
It's just what their culture is.
It's just what they know.
- Oh, it's quite
great of that you all
out of Africa are doing here.
But the change will
have to happen there.
These people, they
will have to stop.
- My campaign has had a
lot of success in the US,
and I've been
thinking about a way
of doing something in Gambia,
because me advocating for
everyone else in the world
while it's still
happening in my own home.
It doesn't make--
- It doesn't make sense.
- Ma.
- Yes baby.
(child babbling)
I want to bring the work
that I am doing here
in the US to The Gambia, and
organize a youth conference.
I started reaching out
to people that I knew
that were committed
in The Gambia.
- Having a youth conference
would be really great.
Over the years,
most of the people
that have been campaigning
are older people.
- If you can get a team
of organizers together.
- [Sait ] If we have the money,
I think we can pull it off.
- The Guardian and
The Girl Generation
will be supporting this event.
Let me worry about that,
and I'll let you guys worry
about what's going
on in the ground.
We don't have a lot of time,
but I really want
it to be a success.
- [Sait] 100%.
- [Abu] Uncle.
- [Jaha] Uncle.
- [Sait] That work.
- Bye.
- Organizing this conference,
it brought young people
into the conversation.
I know the sensitivity of FGM,
but I think it's
very, very important
if the Gambian government
will just give us
the opportunity to listen, and,
I have both my fingers and
toes crossed, so thank you.
- Some people think the
word Gambian is bad.
What I believe, I
believe my wife.
I know is strong woman.
He heard my commit,
that's what I believe in.
- Has the media also started
confirming their attendance?
- [Woman on Phone] Yes.
- You can give
Kumba the go ahead.
She can print the
banners, they look good.
I'm needed more in The Gambia
than I'm needed in the US.
It's gonna take a lot of
commitment and dedication,
but I think we can do it.
(upbeat African music)
I'm going over to my dad's
house before the conference
to talk about why I'm
campaigning against FGM.
Telling everyone else they
shouldn't practice FGM,
while I haven't had
that conversation
with my family looks
a bit hypocritical.
(speaking foreign language)
Having this
conversation with my dad
is part of having the
bigger conversation
with the whole
Gambian community.
(goat bleats)
Today is the beginning
of Eid al-Adha,
the Festival of Sacrifice.
My family will be celebrating,
but I have to tell my
father about my campaign.
(speaking foreign language)
All the girls in my
family have been cut.
It's something we've
never spoken about.
(speaking foreign language)
I thought there was a lot
that I could tell him,
but, you know, he's
a religious man,
and I just couldn't
sit there and tell him,
what you're saying
is not the truth,
because it would
have angered him.
It's important to keep
the conversation going,
because my dad has
a lot of daughters,
and they have a lot
of daughters as well.
If my dad changes his mind,
a lot of girls can be saved.
(frenetic music)
- I'll go to say hi to everyone.
Having the first
national youth conference
to end FGM in The Gambia.
Hi, Nyanda.
It's like the coolest thing
I think I've ever done.
(speaking foreign language)
For you to be able to go
abroad, learn something,
and then take that, and bring
it back to your home country,
and help your own people,
that's how things should be.
Hi, Amaru?
- Yeah, how are you?
- [Jaha] Good.
- He wanted to have an exclusive
interview with you too.
- Well, today's the
opening of the conference.
If he could come here, so
he sees the atmosphere,
sees what this whole
thing is about,
I think it'll be
good for the story.
- Programs.
- We'll go get them
- T-shirt for me, small.
- You guys are okay, right?
Ready to go?
We invited veteran
activists from all
the organizations in The Gambia,
prominent people from the UN,
people from the government.
We are working with the
American government.
Now I want to work
with my own government.
- Inshallah.
- So I'm glad you're here.
(speaking foreign language)
And this has never
happened in The Gambia.
They've never came together
to work on one goal.
Those are my kids.
They came to see the opening.
That's my son, and that's
my daughter right there.
- [Woman] They
seem well behaved.
- Well, they try to be.
Mohammed, you guys need
to stay with Daddy, okay?
When I first started
talking about FGM,
for one, I was afraid.
I'm a Serahule,
and I didn't know
what my family would think.
I didn't know what
the outcome would be,
but I was lucky
to have a husband
that understands
how passionate I am
about these issues.
(audience applauds)
And I'm very, very pleased
that the Gambian government
is here, 'cause I think that
in order for us
to achieve change,
we need you guys
to help us do that.
We need to empower our girls,
and we need to make
sure that no girl child
is at risk of FGM
in this country.
(audience applauds)
- Female genital mutilation
makes it much more likely
for you to have complications.
If you just look at
maternal mortality,
and you find out what high
numbers we have in The Gambia.
Time, and time, and time
again, we have people dying.
It is all due to ignorance,
and what you guys are doing
is the beginning of the
fight against that ignorance.
Let's go on to the
next slide, please.
- Oh.
(audience gasps)
- This is a real picture.
I saw this lady
myself in my clinic.
This girl was
about 26 years old.
Married for about two, three
years, didn't have a child,
and was convinced by
the relatives that
the reason you are
not having a child
is because you were not cut.
So they went to this old
lady, who used a razor blade.
Under no form of anesthesia,
they removed, as you can see,
the clitoris, and part
of the labia minora.
This lady knew nothing about
anatomy, she just cut down.
And when she cut down,
she also cut the urethra,
which is the opening
that passes the urine.
She will be having lots
of infections in her life,
that may destroy
happiness finally,
and this girl's sexual life
has been totally destroyed.
- Now it is our time to
defend the right of our women.
- That's right.
- I for one, I will
take that vow here,
nobody will ever take my
daughter for this atrocity.
(audience claps)
- I am critical that we
always use euphemism.
We can't continue
to tell people that
It's been mutilated.
We don't have to be
ashamed of our body.
Clitoris (speaking
foreign language) vagina
(speaking foreign language)
(audience applauds)
- What motivated you
to start this campaign.
- To me, it's something
that needed to be done,
because even in the
US, it's like a taboo.
No one was willing to
talk about it openly.
- Do you think there are
sufficient political weight
on the part of the government?
- We are here to hold
them accountable,
but we want to work in
partnership with them.
If they don't help us, we
can't achieve what we want.
- You know, the real
movers, the real changers
of public opinion are the imams.
And even the imam of the
president, Imam Fatty,
he said, FGM, it's Islamic.
- I've heard Imam
Fatty's claims.
He's an elder,
and I respect him,
but I went through FGM, and
I know how it affects me.
And if he needs me to sit down
and talk to him about
that, I'm open to that.
- [Interviewer] What would be
the pinnacle of achievement?
- If we can get an national
ban on FGM in The Gambia,
that would, you know,
that would be it.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
- Ladies and gentlemen, I
assure you of government's
commitment in providing
technical support
for the implementation
of the outcome
and recommendations
of this meeting.
- For me, it was important
to have the government,
in front of international
media, in front of local media.
Will you guys help promote for
a national ban against FGM?
If we make this a priority,
we can actually end
FGM in less than 10 years.
- If we have data coming
from the country to say,
this is the magnitude
of the problem
that our women
are going through,
obviously we will do
something about it.
- Now we have something to
hold them accountable for.
The government has
raised the argument that
there's not a lot of research,
but we have the
information out there.
I've been through FGM.
That wasn't circumcision,
that wasn't cutting.
That was female
genital mutilation.
- I am one, and I am one.
- [Audience Members] I am one.
- When you see that
over 2/3 of the women
in this country have
been through FGM,
it's not just some bunch
of scientific numbers.
You can see them, you can
feel them, you can hear them.
- Your last message to
the people of The Gambia?
- I hope they welcome this,
and I hope they understand
that I'm not
abandoning my culture.
I'm a proud Gambian.
I love my culture, but it's
just this part of our culture.
It's wrong, it's not right.
(dramatic music)
When it comes to
changing people's minds,
it's going to be extremely hard,
but we need to have
a huge campaign
and travel to every
single village,
and actually have
these conversations.
I'm going to see the midwife
that cut me as a baby.
She and her sisters carried out
all the mutilations
in our family.
And she was good friends
with my mom as well.
(speaking foreign language)
My mom loved this lady.
I grew up loving this woman.
She is like a second mom to us.
Making her understand how
much pain FGM has caused me
might make her rethink
and stop cutting.
- She thinks it's funny.
As much as I wanted to be angry,
and as much as I
wanted to blame her,
she's as much of a victim
as any one of us is.
It was passed on to her, and
she passed on to her daughter,
and now her daughter's
passing it on to her
17 or 18-year-old
daughter, who's also going
to carry this on if
they are not educated.
(speaking foreign language)
Coming out of that
room, it just showed me
what the challenge
is in The Gambia.
I was naive about everything,
and being here, I just woke up.
Like I had to wake up, and
face all of these things.
Okay, bye ma.
It's just been a
big roller coaster
of different emotions
since I got here.
At times, it's like I
want to stay and do more,
and at times, it's
just, I want to get
the hell out of here
and never come back.
(somber music)
What did you guys
eat at daycare today?
- [Mohammed] I ate a sandwich.
- You had a sandwich?
- [Mohammed] Yeah, and--
- Sometimes I forget
that I'm a mom,
and I have kids, and
they should come first.
But I'm also getting heavy
in debt to run this campaign.
- You make a sandwich tomorrow?
- Sandwich tomorrow.
- Like when I think about
Wells Fargo, and my job there.
If I was at the bank, I would
be running my own branch.
There is good pay,
and it has benefits.
My children don't have those
benefits anymore. (sighs)
- [Khadija] Mommy, I go
to the movies tomorrow?
- I don't know.
If we end FGM, it's worth it.
If we don't, then I don't know.
Let me talk to Uncle Sait.
I was looking at the newspapers
today, and I saw that
in Bakoteh over a hundred
girls were circumcised,
and I saw the quotes
from Imam Fatty.
I mean, it's just
really, really sad
that we just did this
conference, and now you
have these girls being
cut, and then Imam Fatty
coming out and supporting it.
- [Sait] I think what
happened there was
as a response to what
we have been doing.
- Imam Fatty is the
most influential
religious person in The Gambia.
I've lost hope, to be honest.
I really thought,
we can do this,
but right now I don't know.
- Jaha, come on, right
now you're not here,
but we have started a
campaign that we cannot stop.
The conference has given me
this energy to face Imam Fatty.
- I do want to meet
him, don't get me wrong,
but I know his history
with other campaigners,
how he has publicly shamed them.
You know, Imam Fatty is not
an enemy that we want to have.
- But the point is this,
see, everybody
listen to Imam Fatty,
but nobody wants to
challenge Imam Fatty.
We meet him and then
ask him real questions.
We might get something
convincing from him.
(drums resonating)
- When I got there, the
campaign was really taking off,
and it lifted my spirit.
(speaking foreign language)
A number of foundation
gave us money
to set up information
booths around the country
to inform people about
the effects of FGM.
- Your mother, or your
aunts, or your sister
that have been mutilated,
and have children,
you hear them saying that they
have any type of problems?
- You disagree with it?
- Yes.
- So know the health
effects of FGM?
And you don't want it
to continue?
- Let's go.
- We had amazing volunteers.
- So we can go to there.
- [Jaha] For the first
time, we got people
talking about FGM, in the
streets, in their houses.
- Why are you saying
we should stop it?
- In Mecca, female
genital mutilation
is not practiced at all.
So if FGM was that
important to Muslims,
why isn't it practiced in the
Muslim capital of the world?
In Saudi, FGM is not practiced.
In Yemen, FGM is not practiced.
- No, that one is
a new thing to me.
- Okay, if FGM is not
prescribed by Islam,
even Allah didn't think about
putting that in the Quran,
My brother, I think
it is not necessary.
I think we don't
need to put our kids
through that much pain.
- It's like I'm somehow
about to be convinced.
- I'm having one, maybe
I can save that one.
- Please, I would love that.
One thing that keeps coming up,
more than anything
else, is Islam and FGM.
All right, thank you.
We need influential religious
leaders to make that clear
to people that this is not
a religious obligation.
We are on our way
to meet Imam Fatty,
and he's the most influential
imam in the country.
(speaking foreign language)
He's always on TV,
radio, and print media.
And he uses those platforms
to spread his pro FGM messages.
He was the State House
Imam to the President.
He's also a member of the
Supreme Islamic Council.
(speaking foreign language)
I know how critical he has been
of other campaigns
in the country.
I am very nervous
about meeting him.
I'm very anxious.
- I hear about you
and your campaign.
You are fighting
female circumcision,
and say that it's not Islamic.
No one who fear Allah says
circumcision is not Islamic.
It's Islamic.
Our mothers, our grandmothers,
they are practicing
this practice.
You cannot point your
finger a single girl,
in The Gambia, that she was die
because she went through
female circumcision.
Have you it?
- I have.
When I was about eight years
old, my dad has four wives,
and one of my stepmom, her
daughter went through FGM,
and then she later bled a lot,
and as a result
of that, she died.
She was my baby
sister, and she was
my stepmom's first child,
and that's not a lie.
You can go to my dad's
house and talk to her.
Hurting people, torturing
people, it's not right in Islam.
I am confident in
what I'm doing.
I'm not doing this because
I'm getting paid to do it.
I'm not doing it because
someone's telling me to do it.
It's just when I got
married as a 15-year-old,
and when I delivered my kids,
because of the scar
tissue that I have
and the pain that
I went through,
I decided for myself
that I wanted to do this.
And, you know, when my dad,
he's still not convinced
that what I'm doing
is good, but--
- Well your father
is a popular man
in the Serahule community.
So when you are now
leading the campaign
against all of that, your father
will never agree with you.
He will prefer to lose you than
to lose his faith, his
Islam, and his community.
- I'm not perfect,
and no one is perfect.
We all make mistakes,
and I'm new at this.
I'm going to sometimes
get it right.
Sometimes I'm not
going to get it right.
And it's very important
for me to learn
from people like you, because
you are very influential,
and you're very credible.
You know your religion.
- We must educate people
about female circumcision.
Do it is better than not do it.
- [Jaha] Most people believe
that it's a
religious obligation.
- We say it clearly, if
you will do it, do it.
If you don't, lift it, but--
- [Jaha] No Fatty.
- Okay, it's not compulsory.
- I like that you
said that, and I think
if we can make that
clear to our people,
that it's not something
that compulsory.
- [Fatty] That's clear her.
- [Jaha] Is a choice right?
- It's a choice.
- It will be a choice.
- It's your choice.
So we agree on that.
- Especially to say--
- For someone like him
to say that it's choice, I
think will make a difference
to people that think
that this this is a must.
You get what I'm saying?
- That's definitely true.
- So we can use that as
an angle of our campaign.
I don't have to agree
with everything he said,
but in life you have
to know your strategy.
- Jaha is a visionary activist.
She keeps lighting
matches, hoping that
somewhere, someplace,
a fire will start.
- When I first started
working in The Gambia,
my main objective was
to get FGM banned.
We've been working on that,
doing a lot of lobbying,
writing letters,
lobbying government officials,
lobbying the president,
lobbying the first lady.
It's the first step.
It's not the end of
this conversation.
It's not going to
end FGM overnight.
- But we need not descend
into the political aisle,
but we have to be
politically savvy.
- Exactly, we have a really,
really good relationship
with the minister of Health.
I'm honored and
privileged to be here.
Thank you guys.
- Pleasure to meet you.
- I want to try to find--
- So, we agree.
- Since we started
campaigning in the country,
everything we have done,
we've had some type of
government involvement in.
- There's a national
standing committee on FGM.
And it has been headed
at the Women's Bureau.
You know we have a
national plan of action.
- The government is
doing more, I think.
That's a direct
result of what we did
at the first National
Youth Conference.
Minister, thank you.
- I'll see you,
probably next month.
- Oh, okay.
- Jaha's mission is
really to get the culture
to come to her point of view.
She has begun making inroads
at every single level,
from the grassroots
to the highest levels
of religious and
political authority.
Nothing will stop
her from reaching
her goal to end FGM, nothing.
- We are going over
to my dad's house.
His youngest wife
just had a baby.
I want to talk my dad out
of mutilating his daughter.
To not mutilate baby Khadija,
it's going to be very,
very important to me.
She was born when I'm here
doing a campaign against FGM.
If I was to leave this
country today, and find out
in few days that she ended
up getting mutilated,
it's going to break my heart.
If I can't prevent my own
sister from going through FGM,
as an activist
against this practice,
then what I'm doing is
not really effective.
(slow music)
- Khadija, Khadija.
(speaking foreign language)
Hi baby, hi baby.
(speaking foreign language)
No.
(speaking foreign language)
I have so much
respect for my dad.
I never want to
tell him something
that I think is
going to hurt him.
But in this case, I didn't
care what he thought.
I just think it's important
for me to tell him
why this girl needs to stay
the way she was created.
I'm sitting here talking to him.
My dad is not even arguing
some of the things he
argued a few months ago.
As a result of my campaign,
he's actually spent some time
to research FGM and how
harmful it is to women.
It's huge for him to
actually accept that,
and for him to say that.
I'm going to be the first baby
in my family to
not go through FGM.
My dad agreed not
to cut baby Khadija.
I am still yet to process it,
because I don't even
know how to take this in.
(speaking foreign language)
No, seriously.
You sure?
High five, okay,
bye bye, good night.
(triumphant music)
(children clapping)
(upbeat music)
(speaking foreign language)
- I think Jaha is a
young woman of destiny.
There aren't that
many people like Jaha
who can surmount
all of the obstacles
within the context
of her culture.
- Three days after I met with
most of his cabinet members,
I received a call that
the president was about
to make a big
announcement about FGM.
- For 21 years, I've
been reciting to see
where it is stated in the
Quran that this should happen.
I've not seen it.
As from today, FGM is
banned as from today
from the surface
of this country.
- The president of
the country of Gambia
has just declared a ban on FGM.
- I want Gambia to
know how proud I am,
and how happy I am
that this happened.
And today, I wanted to
thank His Excellency,
on behalf of all the girl
children of The Gambia.
He told me that what his
daughter will not go through,
he won't see another
girl child go through.
And to me, that says everything.
This is going to change
lives in The Gambia.
It's going to save a lot
of young girl children.
Knowing that I played a role
in that was just amazing.
- Jaha's campaign together
with Safe Hands for Girls
is very important
because if the president
is now denouncing the practice,
it's because young people
have taken the lead.
- So think this is not the
end of our work as activists.
We want to go into
the communities,
and make sure the
people are aware.
The president has done his
part, now it's up to us.
- What Jaha's
already accomplished
at the tender age of 25 is
nothing short of extraordinary.
It is extraordinary, and it's
nothing short of a miracle.
- Banning FGM is huge.
Now, at least, girls
like my Khadija
in The Gambia will have
a chance against FGM.
But we need to maintain a
active campaign on the ground.
The problem is, a
lot of times we find
that countries ban FGM, but
they don't implement the law.
We need to build
on the momentum,
to make sure that the government
actually implements it.
This is just the beginning.
It's not over yet, until
all the girls are protected.
(Khadija laughs)
(upbeat music)
This is our Africa.
We're doing it for ourselves.
We're doing it for
our daughters, our
sisters, our mothers.
That what we are
doing, and it's simple.
(mellow music)
(upbeat music)
- Khadija, Khadija!
(child laughs)
I didn't know I was mutilated
as a baby until I was 15.
My clitoris was cut off
when I was a week old,
and this is something
that happens
to nearly all the
girls in The Gambia.
It's called female
genital mutilation.
When I was 15, I was
brought to America
to marry an older man.
When he tried to
have sex with me,
that's when I realized what
female genital mutilation was,
and that's when
my horror started.
⪠La, la, la, la
⪠La, la
⪠La, la, la
⪠Oh, Da da do all day
- When Khadija was
born, I knew that
I could never let
this happen to her.
I knew that I had to do
something to stop it.
(dramatic music)
(intense music)
Most of the girls
and women you see
on the streets have been cut.
Their clitoris was
cut off, or worse.
This has been going on
for thousands of years.
I've come home to try and
do something to end it.
Even if that means
taking on my family,
my tribe, and the
whole of Gambia.
So what do you guys think about
when it comes to
the issue of FGM?
- That we should not stop it.
- (Jaha) You don't think
we should stop FGM?
- No please,
we shouldn't stop it.
- Do you want your wife
to not have any desire?
Or you want her to fully
enjoy what you're enjoying?
- It's a conversation
normally came in
to stop that too much of
feeling they might is having.
- It's natural, God gave
it to her, why stop it?
I don't need to cut my
daughter's body parts
to make her, you
know, stay calm,
to make her stay a virgin, no.
You need to protect your
daughters, don't mutilate them.
It's not helping them.
Like, I've been through it.
It didn't help me.
(upbeat music)
This is the house I grew up in.
We lived in one
apartment with my mom,
and then my stepmom lived
in the other apartment.
My family in The Gambia
we are Serahules.
(speaking foreign language)
When I was growing up,
my dad had three wives,
and he has a lot of kids.
You know, the number
of siblings I have,
I think at least 30 of us.
Okay, the youngest ones,
I really can't name.
Have to call them and
be like, who's your mom.
So it's like,
I mean, I have a
lot of siblings.
This is where the
mosque begins at.
My father is an imam,
and he built the mosque
behind our family home.
He boasts when it
comes to his kids,
especially his daughters.
None of them dishonored him
by getting pregnant
before marriage.
All of them were virgins.
The fact that my dad had
other wives, and other kids,
I hated it more than my mom did.
You know, as a child,
you were jealous,
'cause you wanted
to be the only ones.
And every time he was
away, you felt like
they were taking time from you,
and they were taking
time from your mom.
(speaking foreign language)
So you'd just look
at her and know
that she didn't feel
happy sharing her husband.
(singing in foreign language)
it was very much a
Serahule tradition that
women didn't get educated.
(speaking foreign language)
Me and my sister, we
were the first girls
in our family to be
enrolled in school.
My mom felt like it
was very important,
even though my dad
was against it.
She was very strict,
but with me she was lenient.
And when I come home
and say, I would never
marry a guy that
has another wife,
I would never let
my husband hit me,
she just used to sit and laugh.
(speaking foreign language)
When I was eight years old,
my marriage was arranged
to a guy that lived in New York.
My bride price was paid.
I wasn't eligible
to live with him,
because I was still
very, very young.
When I hit puberty,
that was when
I was going to be
eligible to get married.
As Serahule girl, it's
not abnormal for us
to have our marriages arranged
when we are very, very young.
If you are actually over 18,
and you don't have a husband,
people think that you're
expired in some kind of way,
so that's a problem.
When I was about
13, my mom found out
that she had breast cancer.
I remember being in
a hospital with her
when the doctors told her that
she only had a few months.
She looked at me and said,
"Don't listen, they're not God.
"That's not going to happen.
"They're lying."
It was hard to let go,
'cause we were very close.
(somber music)
Gambissara's the most
conservative, hard line,
and hostile place that you
can go and talk about FGM.
It is a village that
has 100% of women cut.
It's where my family is from.
This is Gambissara.
When I was young, I would spend
the whole Summer there
and going to the farms.
(speaking foreign language)
And I haven't been back
since my mother passed away.
The whole village came out.
It blew me away, 'cause
I wasn't expecting that,
and knowing that I came
here to discuss FGM.
(speaking foreign language)
(singing in foreign language)
- [Crew Member]
Jaha, are you okay?
- This is my mom's home.
That was the last place
that I saw my mom alive.
The last place that
I heard her laugh.
(speaking foreign language)
This was the first
time there was
ever an open debate about FGM,
and it was really,
really amazing.
(speaking foreign language)
For women like her, they have
never seen an uncut woman.
They don't know any other way.
(speaking foreign language)
The lack of basic health care
is a huge contributor
to the issue of FGM.
You know, Gambissara doesn't
even have a good hospital.
(speaking foreign language)
We live in a society
wherein women are made
to believe that, you know, you
have to bow down to your man.
Men tell women, we
want our daughters cut,
and they cut them.
My aunt, my sisters told me
that this is how we lived.
I should have never been taught
to accept those kind of things.
(somber music)
When I was 15, I was brought
to America by my dad,
to get married to the guy
that I was promised to.
He was in his forties.
I arrive in New York
on Christmas Day.
My husband was at the
airport to pick me up.
He wanted to touch
me, and hug me and
I didn't want him touching
me, and I kept hitting him.
Soon as I get to my
aunt and uncle's house,
there was people, there was
cooking, there was everything.
And I knew that that was it.
The night of the marriage,
they had an older woman,
kind of like a sex advisor,
that would tell you
about what to do.
You know, this is the position
to make it more comfortable,
or this is the products
that you can use
to kind of lessen the pain.
This woman actually bathes you.
She rubbed perfume,
lotion all over me.
And they dressed me.
They made me wear
white lingerie.
They made me wear
these waist beads.
I told my dad that I
didn't want to get married.
I begged, I pleaded,
I did everything
to just ask him not to
make me go through this.
They took me to his house.
When I got there, they
took me inside the room.
They have this tradition
of making you kneel
to your husband.
Then they left me there
by myself with him.
I cried the whole time.
I cried for my
mom, and felt like
she could have been here,
she would have saved me.
I was having pain, and
difficulties with sex.
And he couldn't
really penetrate me.
After days of trying to have
sex, and not being able to,
they said, maybe
she's infibulated.
In my tribe, we are mutilated
when we are about a week old.
The clitoris is cut,
as well as the labia,
and the vagina is sealed,
leaving only a tiny hole.
When you're infibulated,
you can't really have sex
until you're cut back open.
That's when they
decided to take me
to a doctor in downtown
Manhattan to be reopened.
I don't know what he used,
but it was like a gel,
and then he did what he did.
It was painful.
And this doctor told
me I had to have sex
right away in order
to keep it open.
That's when I
realized what it meant
to be infibulated, and
what FGM actually means.
It's just something that
women never talk about.
You know, they never talked
to me about the pain.
They don't tell you that sex
is going to hurt forever.
This is not a
conversation that we have.
We have a cultural silence.
You know, FGM is a practice
that you can't reverse.
Once a girl has gone
through, is a practice
that they live with for
the rest of their lives.
But when I got married,
because I was infibulated,
if you know what
infibulation is,
literally, you can't have
sex until they reopen you.
And when you're also
delivering your baby,
I have three kids, but each
time I deliver my babies,
they literally have
to cut me open.
And that's because
I've bene through FGM.
- Is it really true that it
will reduce sexual desire?
- The clitoris of a woman is
sensual part of a woman's body.
That's how you feel, that's
what makes you gain pleasure.
When that clitoris is cut off,
you don't get that feeling.
Every time your husband
is having sex with you,
when he's enjoying it, you
are laying there in pain,
and that's not fair to women.
- Isn't it sunna?
- [Jaha] FGM is not sunna.
- But I have lived where
it is that FGM is sunna.
- The Prophet does not condone
violence against women,
and FGM is actually
violence against women.
- Thank you.
(pensive music)
- After she got
married, we would call
each other all the time.
While she was there,
it was constant crying.
She was 15, and she was
expect to be a wife.
The guy would threaten
her with violence.
It was just awful for her.
- Being forced into a
marriage is one of the hardest
things that you can
ever go through,
because to me, it's like rape.
You just can't tell
me anything else.
When you force the
girl into a marriage,
you've given someone the right
to rape here every single day.
No one in my family
would listen to me.
They thought it was normal.
And then someone that
knew my situation
called this woman
who was leading
the international human rights
organization, Equality Now.
That's when Taina Bien-Aime
came into my life,
and showed me that
it wasn't normal.
It wasn't okay.
- I kept telling her,
if you can escape,
there is a police
station down your block,
or come to the office,
or come to my home.
It was an emotional tug-of-war
that she was going through.
How can I extricate
myself from this violence
without totally
divorcing from my family,
or without turning my
back on everything I know?
(gentle music)
- It got to a point where,
and it was so bad that, I
just was like, you know what?
I have to leave.
- She called her father, and
told him that she had been
in touch with women's
rights organizations.
And I don't know whether
there was a fear there
that they could be
reported, but he allowed her
to leave the apartment
to live with his brother
a few blocks away,
still in the Bronx.
- It was like a sense of
relief when I found out
that Jaha had left
that marriage.
All she could think of was like
how she could get
back into school.
- I was living with
my aunt and uncle.
My aunt didn't think I
needed to go to school,
so she didn't help
me find school.
I went around at least
10 different schools
in the Bronx, and
they wouldn't take me
because I didn't have
a guardian with me.
Finally, I went to Taft,
and they enrolled me.
(children singing
in foreign language)
⪠Freedom and peace each day
(speaking foreign language)
- The root cause of FGM and
issues like child marriage
is also because of
the lack of education.
(speaking foreign language)
- Jaha comes from
an ethnic group that
does not believe in
girls' education.
The average age of
marriage is 14 years old.
Just bucking that
tradition alone
made her somewhat of a pariah.
- After my marriage ended,
people made my life hell.
I didn't want them looking at me
like I brought
shame on my family.
My aunt, she'll be
talking to her friends,
and they said, she's
this washed up girl
that has already had sex,
she's not a virgin anymore.
No one wants her.
And I would be in
the room, listening
to what they were
saying, and it killed me,
because I was, you
know, it's not like
they said it behind my back.
I was right there.
- At one point, Jaha
got so miserable that,
instead of going home at night,
she would sleep in the
subway 'til morning
before she would get off
the subway and go to school.
- I was fighting everything.
I was fighting to survive.
I was fighting to
get an education.
And most importantly,
I was fighting
to be who I wanted to be.
- When a human being suffers
severe trauma, like Jaha,
and then being in an environment
where she was not supported,
she was in trouble.
She was in deep trouble.
(tense music)
I received a call telling me
that Jaha was in the hospital.
She was at St. Vincent's, and
she had attempted suicide.
- I had enough, and I
would have rather died
than going back to what
they wanted me to be.
Taina was there a lot.
She brought me books.
She made me believe in myself.
She made me feel that my
life wasn't worthless.
When I left the hospital,
I realized that I needed
to get away from the Bronx.
- And that's when she told
me that I'm done fighting.
All she wanted at this
point was to just get out.
The only way that she
knew how, to just get out,
was to just let them arrange
a second marriage for her.
- I told my dad,
regardless of what happens,
I will stay in the
marriage, and he called me
and told me that my
marriage was fixed,
and then I'm moving to Atlanta.
So, at 17, I ended up remarried.
- I felt like it was rushed.
She was still pretty traumatized
from the first marriage.
I didn't want her to go through
with the second marriage at all.
But at that point, she just
wanted to leave New York,
and everything that had
occurred in New York behind her.
(cheerful music)
- My husband, Hagie,
he was more open than
the first marriage.
He was more open to my ideas.
He wasn't in the business
of controlling me.
Daddy's gonna go make you food.
Come on, go with daddy.
- [Hagie] Come on, now.
- We started a family.
First, I got pregnant
with my son, Mohammed.
Then I got pregnant
again with Khadija.
- Mommy
- Uh-huh.
- [Khadija] I'm a
beautiful mermaid.
- [Jaha] Yes, you
look beautiful.
You look more than beautiful.
- Hey you do this one.
- Ah, you messed up my jack!
- I did.
- And then I had
my little boy, Abu.
Abu!
(Abu squeals and laughs)
Give it hear, mwah.
Okay, you go night night?
After Khadija, I started working
for Wells Fargo as
a part-time teller.
You want to be like
Mommy when you grow up?
Really?
- Khadija.
- Yeah.
- Are you behaving
- Yes.
- while Mommy gets dressed up?
I went to Atlanta to visit Jaha.
Do you want to be
awesome like your mommy?
She was able to
work at the bank,
being a wife, being a mom,
and she was great at it.
I was like, seems like you did
make the right
decision after all.
⪠Da da da da da
⪠Dada dada dada dada da
(applause)
(gentle music)
- I remember being
at work and talking
with some of my friends
about their relationships.
You know, at that
point, then you realize,
okay, am I missing something?
Because the things
they are talking about
is not the things that
you're experiencing.
I thought sex was just painful
with my first marriage,
but then when I got
married the second time,
it was the same story.
Then I started talking to
other girls that are African,
that have been through FGM,
and I realized that
they were all feeling
the same thing
that I was feeling.
So it just made me
want to research.
Trying to find answers.
Trying to understand
my own body.
You know, how can I enjoy sex?
How can I reverse this?
Once I found out that
this was permanent,
it just kind of made me,
something has to change.
And I started contacting imams,
and I asked them, is FGM
a religious obligation?
And where in the
Quran is that lesson?
And then they can't
answer that question.
Islam has nothing
to do with FGM.
It made me realize that I
needed to tell people the truth
that this is not a
religious obligation.
It was just, people's selfish
need to control women.
I came up with the idea
of me starting a blog.
Just started talking
about my own experience.
Eventually, that kind of
evolved to Safe Hands for Girls.
Are you guys ready?
- Go.
- Woo.
- A survival led
organization against FGM.
I was able to get
other girls to join me.
(group applauds)
Okay, come on in.
Girls that have
been through FGM.
We want to be the big
sisters in your life,
whatever questions that you
have, we are here for you.
(speaking foreign language)
Women that are here
in the United States
that have been cut,
no one is trying to
answer their questions.
When they go to the doctor,
they are looked at
like a freak show.
This is somewhere
that you can come to,
without being afraid,
without being ashamed.
Because I'm trying to
get us to break the cycle
of abuse from the
past generation.
(upbeat music)
- Hi, a butterfly.
- Do we see a butterfly?
- I love butterflies.
- I'm gonna see him
when I get home.
- Me having a daughter was like,
you can't say this can't
happen to my daughter,
and then watch other people's
daughters go through it.
You guys can play.
Me and Auntie Naima
can sit and chat.
Naima was one of the
women who got involved
in Safe Hands with me early on.
Her name is hot.
- [Naima] I know.
- [Jaha] Come sit
next to Auntie Naima.
- Come and sit
here for a second.
I think so, her hair's
all flat in the back.
I was born in Nairobi, Kenya.
FGM is something that's a
big part of our culture.
It's a right of passage.
For my mother,
that's a gift to me.
Something that would help
me get into womanhood.
Let me know if it hurts, okay?
It happens between the
ages of five and nine.
For me, it happened
about nine years old.
It's gonna be very fast.
- Okay.
- I actually looked
forward to it.
This is something that
happens to all the girls.
You get gifts, there's a party.
On the day of my cutting, my
mother led me to the room.
All her friends and neighbors
were sitting there waiting.
The cutter hadn't shown up yet.
I volunteered to go get her,
and I held her hand as
we walked up the hill.
Little did I know, these
were the same hands
that were going to violate me.
I was brought into the
room and told to sit down.
I could feel the cold
cement underneath me.
All the kids were out playing,
and I could hear the chatter.
(children speaking in
a foreign language)
The cutter sat in front of
me, and picked up the razor.
I started calling out for my
mom, and I started to struggle.
And then at that point,
the other two women
on either side of me
then held my legs down
and my shoulders back, where
I couldn't move at all.
But I fought, I fought hard.
I could feel the blade cutting,
and blood just gushing out,
and just the pain,
I can't explain.
(somber music)
After it happened,
everything was different.
I was a pretty much
straight A student.
That went downhill.
- [Khadija] I'm hot.
- You're hot?
- Yeah, but she's trying to
take off her shirt also, no.
- You can't take off your
shirt, though, you're a girl.
Come around.
It sucks, I know,
it's not a nice rule.
- I'm gonna go
play with the dog.
- I know for a
fact that there is
longterm effects as far as PTSD,
and also girls and
women being more docile.
- [Jaha] You got it?
- [Mohammed] All right,
let's count the steps.
- When we first started
Safe Hands for Girls,
it was more to provide
support to FGM survivors.
How many daughters do you have?
- [Mother] Two.
- But then, I found out that
it was bigger than that.
And what do you think
will happen to them
if you do end up taking
them back to Gambia?
- Same thing that
happened to me.
They gonna get mutilated.
- There's also something
called vacation cutting,
where girls are sent to their
parents' home countries,
and they go through the FGM,
and then they come back
to the United States.
Is that the reason why you've
been afraid to go back home.
- [Mother] Yeah.
- There's no reason
why children born
here in the United
States should be
at risk of something like FGM.
- Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.
Tonight is dedicated to
Safe Hands for Girls.
(audience applauds)
- The best thing that we
have is our own voices.
I urge all of you
to not stay silent,
'cause whether you've
been through FGM or not,
you know someone in
our community that
has been through FGM.
It is a moral
obligation for all of us
to stand up and say,
enough is enough,
and we have to end this.
(audience applauds)
- [Audience Member] Good
job, good job, good job.
- Mother, I draw
breath from you.
I have lived in you,
loved for you, loved just you.
But my love is that.
The first time I talked
about FGM, I felt exposed.
I felt vulnerable, like I
had just laid my soul bare.
They took from me my humanhood.
Promised me womanhood.
Left me with no clitoral
hood, no clitoris.
It's such a taboo back home to
talk about it, it felt weird.
You have rearranged me.
Barred my sexuality,
shaved away these lips.
Ground zero barren land.
It's something that happened
to me, and it's hard for
me to talk about it, but
I think it's necessary.
I do not blame you for it.
You never knew better.
It is up to us to speak up.
Be someone's voice.
Hold someone's hand.
It is up to us to
end this practice.
(audience applauds)
(calm music)
(children shouting)
- Then I saw a news
article from the UK.
They did this petition there,
and as a result, the
Education Minister was writing
to all the schools, to set up
guidelines to deal with FGM.
I thought, what an amazing idea.
And I was like, I can
do this in the US.
Abu, you kicked me again.
Me and you gonna
have real problems.
I wrote a petition.
I wanted the Obama
Administration
to conduct a study on
FGM in the United States.
(upbeat music)
- Here Mommy, here Mommy.
- Okay.
I started Tweeting about it.
I started looking for
people to support the idea.
- [Man] What's it?
- It's a survey about FGM.
- [Man] What's FGM?
- Female genital mutilation.
- Oh, okay.
- And then Equality Now decided
to add their name
to the petition.
The Guardian also came on board.
- We as a paper have committed
to an international
campaign to eradicate FGM.
- Slavery was a culture in
America for over 300 years,
and if culture triggers
human rights violation,
then that piece of
culture must go.
and help us end FGM
in the United States.
When The Guardian came on board,
the numbers started going up.
We went from 10 signatures a day
to thousands of
signatures a day.
We just passed 83,000,
that's amazing.
We started getting more
exposure with the media.
That just helped us take
it to a whole new level.
People will think
your mom is right,
and Obama needs to do something.
- Female genital
mutilation is barbaric,
and should be eliminated.
- This shows that ordinary
people can believe
in something and make a
difference, and make a change.
All it takes is passion.
I was still working at the bank.
I decided to take
a leave of absence
'til things cool down a bit.
But things didn't cool
down, they escalated.
(audience applauds)
when we say that we want
to end FGM in a generation,
we need to make sure that
we are actually doing that.
Foot binding actually took
10 years to end in China,
but I believe if
we really push it,
we can end FGM in 10
years, just like they did
with foot binding
in China, thank you.
(audience applauds)
- And I hope that you
will continue to mobilize
the public, the whole community.
- I hope you will
continue using your power
to influence more world
leaders to take action.
- You can count on the
United Nations, thank you.
- I'm gonna take a
selfie, if that's fine.
- Okay, yes. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
- Okay.
- Hey. (laughs)
Abu, okay.
- You want to see my
eyes directly, huh?
Okay.
- Say bye, aw, thank you.
- Okay, all the best to you.
- Thank you sir, thank you.
- Yay! (laughs)
Abu, you met Ban
Ki-moon, give me five.
High five.
(fast, cheerful music)
The Girl Summit is the
international summit
that focuses on forced
marriage and FGM.
- How can we understand this
practice so that we can end it?
- We have to know how
they feel about the issue.
I didn't go through
FGM out of hate.
I didn't go through
FGM out of torture.
You know, even with
my early marriage,
I've never seen it
from a place of hate.
It's just what their culture is.
It's just what they know.
- Oh, it's quite
great of that you all
out of Africa are doing here.
But the change will
have to happen there.
These people, they
will have to stop.
- My campaign has had a
lot of success in the US,
and I've been
thinking about a way
of doing something in Gambia,
because me advocating for
everyone else in the world
while it's still
happening in my own home.
It doesn't make--
- It doesn't make sense.
- Ma.
- Yes baby.
(child babbling)
I want to bring the work
that I am doing here
in the US to The Gambia, and
organize a youth conference.
I started reaching out
to people that I knew
that were committed
in The Gambia.
- Having a youth conference
would be really great.
Over the years,
most of the people
that have been campaigning
are older people.
- If you can get a team
of organizers together.
- [Sait ] If we have the money,
I think we can pull it off.
- The Guardian and
The Girl Generation
will be supporting this event.
Let me worry about that,
and I'll let you guys worry
about what's going
on in the ground.
We don't have a lot of time,
but I really want
it to be a success.
- [Sait] 100%.
- [Abu] Uncle.
- [Jaha] Uncle.
- [Sait] That work.
- Bye.
- Organizing this conference,
it brought young people
into the conversation.
I know the sensitivity of FGM,
but I think it's
very, very important
if the Gambian government
will just give us
the opportunity to listen, and,
I have both my fingers and
toes crossed, so thank you.
- Some people think the
word Gambian is bad.
What I believe, I
believe my wife.
I know is strong woman.
He heard my commit,
that's what I believe in.
- Has the media also started
confirming their attendance?
- [Woman on Phone] Yes.
- You can give
Kumba the go ahead.
She can print the
banners, they look good.
I'm needed more in The Gambia
than I'm needed in the US.
It's gonna take a lot of
commitment and dedication,
but I think we can do it.
(upbeat African music)
I'm going over to my dad's
house before the conference
to talk about why I'm
campaigning against FGM.
Telling everyone else they
shouldn't practice FGM,
while I haven't had
that conversation
with my family looks
a bit hypocritical.
(speaking foreign language)
Having this
conversation with my dad
is part of having the
bigger conversation
with the whole
Gambian community.
(goat bleats)
Today is the beginning
of Eid al-Adha,
the Festival of Sacrifice.
My family will be celebrating,
but I have to tell my
father about my campaign.
(speaking foreign language)
All the girls in my
family have been cut.
It's something we've
never spoken about.
(speaking foreign language)
I thought there was a lot
that I could tell him,
but, you know, he's
a religious man,
and I just couldn't
sit there and tell him,
what you're saying
is not the truth,
because it would
have angered him.
It's important to keep
the conversation going,
because my dad has
a lot of daughters,
and they have a lot
of daughters as well.
If my dad changes his mind,
a lot of girls can be saved.
(frenetic music)
- I'll go to say hi to everyone.
Having the first
national youth conference
to end FGM in The Gambia.
Hi, Nyanda.
It's like the coolest thing
I think I've ever done.
(speaking foreign language)
For you to be able to go
abroad, learn something,
and then take that, and bring
it back to your home country,
and help your own people,
that's how things should be.
Hi, Amaru?
- Yeah, how are you?
- [Jaha] Good.
- He wanted to have an exclusive
interview with you too.
- Well, today's the
opening of the conference.
If he could come here, so
he sees the atmosphere,
sees what this whole
thing is about,
I think it'll be
good for the story.
- Programs.
- We'll go get them
- T-shirt for me, small.
- You guys are okay, right?
Ready to go?
We invited veteran
activists from all
the organizations in The Gambia,
prominent people from the UN,
people from the government.
We are working with the
American government.
Now I want to work
with my own government.
- Inshallah.
- So I'm glad you're here.
(speaking foreign language)
And this has never
happened in The Gambia.
They've never came together
to work on one goal.
Those are my kids.
They came to see the opening.
That's my son, and that's
my daughter right there.
- [Woman] They
seem well behaved.
- Well, they try to be.
Mohammed, you guys need
to stay with Daddy, okay?
When I first started
talking about FGM,
for one, I was afraid.
I'm a Serahule,
and I didn't know
what my family would think.
I didn't know what
the outcome would be,
but I was lucky
to have a husband
that understands
how passionate I am
about these issues.
(audience applauds)
And I'm very, very pleased
that the Gambian government
is here, 'cause I think that
in order for us
to achieve change,
we need you guys
to help us do that.
We need to empower our girls,
and we need to make
sure that no girl child
is at risk of FGM
in this country.
(audience applauds)
- Female genital mutilation
makes it much more likely
for you to have complications.
If you just look at
maternal mortality,
and you find out what high
numbers we have in The Gambia.
Time, and time, and time
again, we have people dying.
It is all due to ignorance,
and what you guys are doing
is the beginning of the
fight against that ignorance.
Let's go on to the
next slide, please.
- Oh.
(audience gasps)
- This is a real picture.
I saw this lady
myself in my clinic.
This girl was
about 26 years old.
Married for about two, three
years, didn't have a child,
and was convinced by
the relatives that
the reason you are
not having a child
is because you were not cut.
So they went to this old
lady, who used a razor blade.
Under no form of anesthesia,
they removed, as you can see,
the clitoris, and part
of the labia minora.
This lady knew nothing about
anatomy, she just cut down.
And when she cut down,
she also cut the urethra,
which is the opening
that passes the urine.
She will be having lots
of infections in her life,
that may destroy
happiness finally,
and this girl's sexual life
has been totally destroyed.
- Now it is our time to
defend the right of our women.
- That's right.
- I for one, I will
take that vow here,
nobody will ever take my
daughter for this atrocity.
(audience claps)
- I am critical that we
always use euphemism.
We can't continue
to tell people that
It's been mutilated.
We don't have to be
ashamed of our body.
Clitoris (speaking
foreign language) vagina
(speaking foreign language)
(audience applauds)
- What motivated you
to start this campaign.
- To me, it's something
that needed to be done,
because even in the
US, it's like a taboo.
No one was willing to
talk about it openly.
- Do you think there are
sufficient political weight
on the part of the government?
- We are here to hold
them accountable,
but we want to work in
partnership with them.
If they don't help us, we
can't achieve what we want.
- You know, the real
movers, the real changers
of public opinion are the imams.
And even the imam of the
president, Imam Fatty,
he said, FGM, it's Islamic.
- I've heard Imam
Fatty's claims.
He's an elder,
and I respect him,
but I went through FGM, and
I know how it affects me.
And if he needs me to sit down
and talk to him about
that, I'm open to that.
- [Interviewer] What would be
the pinnacle of achievement?
- If we can get an national
ban on FGM in The Gambia,
that would, you know,
that would be it.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
- Ladies and gentlemen, I
assure you of government's
commitment in providing
technical support
for the implementation
of the outcome
and recommendations
of this meeting.
- For me, it was important
to have the government,
in front of international
media, in front of local media.
Will you guys help promote for
a national ban against FGM?
If we make this a priority,
we can actually end
FGM in less than 10 years.
- If we have data coming
from the country to say,
this is the magnitude
of the problem
that our women
are going through,
obviously we will do
something about it.
- Now we have something to
hold them accountable for.
The government has
raised the argument that
there's not a lot of research,
but we have the
information out there.
I've been through FGM.
That wasn't circumcision,
that wasn't cutting.
That was female
genital mutilation.
- I am one, and I am one.
- [Audience Members] I am one.
- When you see that
over 2/3 of the women
in this country have
been through FGM,
it's not just some bunch
of scientific numbers.
You can see them, you can
feel them, you can hear them.
- Your last message to
the people of The Gambia?
- I hope they welcome this,
and I hope they understand
that I'm not
abandoning my culture.
I'm a proud Gambian.
I love my culture, but it's
just this part of our culture.
It's wrong, it's not right.
(dramatic music)
When it comes to
changing people's minds,
it's going to be extremely hard,
but we need to have
a huge campaign
and travel to every
single village,
and actually have
these conversations.
I'm going to see the midwife
that cut me as a baby.
She and her sisters carried out
all the mutilations
in our family.
And she was good friends
with my mom as well.
(speaking foreign language)
My mom loved this lady.
I grew up loving this woman.
She is like a second mom to us.
Making her understand how
much pain FGM has caused me
might make her rethink
and stop cutting.
- She thinks it's funny.
As much as I wanted to be angry,
and as much as I
wanted to blame her,
she's as much of a victim
as any one of us is.
It was passed on to her, and
she passed on to her daughter,
and now her daughter's
passing it on to her
17 or 18-year-old
daughter, who's also going
to carry this on if
they are not educated.
(speaking foreign language)
Coming out of that
room, it just showed me
what the challenge
is in The Gambia.
I was naive about everything,
and being here, I just woke up.
Like I had to wake up, and
face all of these things.
Okay, bye ma.
It's just been a
big roller coaster
of different emotions
since I got here.
At times, it's like I
want to stay and do more,
and at times, it's
just, I want to get
the hell out of here
and never come back.
(somber music)
What did you guys
eat at daycare today?
- [Mohammed] I ate a sandwich.
- You had a sandwich?
- [Mohammed] Yeah, and--
- Sometimes I forget
that I'm a mom,
and I have kids, and
they should come first.
But I'm also getting heavy
in debt to run this campaign.
- You make a sandwich tomorrow?
- Sandwich tomorrow.
- Like when I think about
Wells Fargo, and my job there.
If I was at the bank, I would
be running my own branch.
There is good pay,
and it has benefits.
My children don't have those
benefits anymore. (sighs)
- [Khadija] Mommy, I go
to the movies tomorrow?
- I don't know.
If we end FGM, it's worth it.
If we don't, then I don't know.
Let me talk to Uncle Sait.
I was looking at the newspapers
today, and I saw that
in Bakoteh over a hundred
girls were circumcised,
and I saw the quotes
from Imam Fatty.
I mean, it's just
really, really sad
that we just did this
conference, and now you
have these girls being
cut, and then Imam Fatty
coming out and supporting it.
- [Sait] I think what
happened there was
as a response to what
we have been doing.
- Imam Fatty is the
most influential
religious person in The Gambia.
I've lost hope, to be honest.
I really thought,
we can do this,
but right now I don't know.
- Jaha, come on, right
now you're not here,
but we have started a
campaign that we cannot stop.
The conference has given me
this energy to face Imam Fatty.
- I do want to meet
him, don't get me wrong,
but I know his history
with other campaigners,
how he has publicly shamed them.
You know, Imam Fatty is not
an enemy that we want to have.
- But the point is this,
see, everybody
listen to Imam Fatty,
but nobody wants to
challenge Imam Fatty.
We meet him and then
ask him real questions.
We might get something
convincing from him.
(drums resonating)
- When I got there, the
campaign was really taking off,
and it lifted my spirit.
(speaking foreign language)
A number of foundation
gave us money
to set up information
booths around the country
to inform people about
the effects of FGM.
- Your mother, or your
aunts, or your sister
that have been mutilated,
and have children,
you hear them saying that they
have any type of problems?
- You disagree with it?
- Yes.
- So know the health
effects of FGM?
And you don't want it
to continue?
- Let's go.
- We had amazing volunteers.
- So we can go to there.
- [Jaha] For the first
time, we got people
talking about FGM, in the
streets, in their houses.
- Why are you saying
we should stop it?
- In Mecca, female
genital mutilation
is not practiced at all.
So if FGM was that
important to Muslims,
why isn't it practiced in the
Muslim capital of the world?
In Saudi, FGM is not practiced.
In Yemen, FGM is not practiced.
- No, that one is
a new thing to me.
- Okay, if FGM is not
prescribed by Islam,
even Allah didn't think about
putting that in the Quran,
My brother, I think
it is not necessary.
I think we don't
need to put our kids
through that much pain.
- It's like I'm somehow
about to be convinced.
- I'm having one, maybe
I can save that one.
- Please, I would love that.
One thing that keeps coming up,
more than anything
else, is Islam and FGM.
All right, thank you.
We need influential religious
leaders to make that clear
to people that this is not
a religious obligation.
We are on our way
to meet Imam Fatty,
and he's the most influential
imam in the country.
(speaking foreign language)
He's always on TV,
radio, and print media.
And he uses those platforms
to spread his pro FGM messages.
He was the State House
Imam to the President.
He's also a member of the
Supreme Islamic Council.
(speaking foreign language)
I know how critical he has been
of other campaigns
in the country.
I am very nervous
about meeting him.
I'm very anxious.
- I hear about you
and your campaign.
You are fighting
female circumcision,
and say that it's not Islamic.
No one who fear Allah says
circumcision is not Islamic.
It's Islamic.
Our mothers, our grandmothers,
they are practicing
this practice.
You cannot point your
finger a single girl,
in The Gambia, that she was die
because she went through
female circumcision.
Have you it?
- I have.
When I was about eight years
old, my dad has four wives,
and one of my stepmom, her
daughter went through FGM,
and then she later bled a lot,
and as a result
of that, she died.
She was my baby
sister, and she was
my stepmom's first child,
and that's not a lie.
You can go to my dad's
house and talk to her.
Hurting people, torturing
people, it's not right in Islam.
I am confident in
what I'm doing.
I'm not doing this because
I'm getting paid to do it.
I'm not doing it because
someone's telling me to do it.
It's just when I got
married as a 15-year-old,
and when I delivered my kids,
because of the scar
tissue that I have
and the pain that
I went through,
I decided for myself
that I wanted to do this.
And, you know, when my dad,
he's still not convinced
that what I'm doing
is good, but--
- Well your father
is a popular man
in the Serahule community.
So when you are now
leading the campaign
against all of that, your father
will never agree with you.
He will prefer to lose you than
to lose his faith, his
Islam, and his community.
- I'm not perfect,
and no one is perfect.
We all make mistakes,
and I'm new at this.
I'm going to sometimes
get it right.
Sometimes I'm not
going to get it right.
And it's very important
for me to learn
from people like you, because
you are very influential,
and you're very credible.
You know your religion.
- We must educate people
about female circumcision.
Do it is better than not do it.
- [Jaha] Most people believe
that it's a
religious obligation.
- We say it clearly, if
you will do it, do it.
If you don't, lift it, but--
- [Jaha] No Fatty.
- Okay, it's not compulsory.
- I like that you
said that, and I think
if we can make that
clear to our people,
that it's not something
that compulsory.
- [Fatty] That's clear her.
- [Jaha] Is a choice right?
- It's a choice.
- It will be a choice.
- It's your choice.
So we agree on that.
- Especially to say--
- For someone like him
to say that it's choice, I
think will make a difference
to people that think
that this this is a must.
You get what I'm saying?
- That's definitely true.
- So we can use that as
an angle of our campaign.
I don't have to agree
with everything he said,
but in life you have
to know your strategy.
- Jaha is a visionary activist.
She keeps lighting
matches, hoping that
somewhere, someplace,
a fire will start.
- When I first started
working in The Gambia,
my main objective was
to get FGM banned.
We've been working on that,
doing a lot of lobbying,
writing letters,
lobbying government officials,
lobbying the president,
lobbying the first lady.
It's the first step.
It's not the end of
this conversation.
It's not going to
end FGM overnight.
- But we need not descend
into the political aisle,
but we have to be
politically savvy.
- Exactly, we have a really,
really good relationship
with the minister of Health.
I'm honored and
privileged to be here.
Thank you guys.
- Pleasure to meet you.
- I want to try to find--
- So, we agree.
- Since we started
campaigning in the country,
everything we have done,
we've had some type of
government involvement in.
- There's a national
standing committee on FGM.
And it has been headed
at the Women's Bureau.
You know we have a
national plan of action.
- The government is
doing more, I think.
That's a direct
result of what we did
at the first National
Youth Conference.
Minister, thank you.
- I'll see you,
probably next month.
- Oh, okay.
- Jaha's mission is
really to get the culture
to come to her point of view.
She has begun making inroads
at every single level,
from the grassroots
to the highest levels
of religious and
political authority.
Nothing will stop
her from reaching
her goal to end FGM, nothing.
- We are going over
to my dad's house.
His youngest wife
just had a baby.
I want to talk my dad out
of mutilating his daughter.
To not mutilate baby Khadija,
it's going to be very,
very important to me.
She was born when I'm here
doing a campaign against FGM.
If I was to leave this
country today, and find out
in few days that she ended
up getting mutilated,
it's going to break my heart.
If I can't prevent my own
sister from going through FGM,
as an activist
against this practice,
then what I'm doing is
not really effective.
(slow music)
- Khadija, Khadija.
(speaking foreign language)
Hi baby, hi baby.
(speaking foreign language)
No.
(speaking foreign language)
I have so much
respect for my dad.
I never want to
tell him something
that I think is
going to hurt him.
But in this case, I didn't
care what he thought.
I just think it's important
for me to tell him
why this girl needs to stay
the way she was created.
I'm sitting here talking to him.
My dad is not even arguing
some of the things he
argued a few months ago.
As a result of my campaign,
he's actually spent some time
to research FGM and how
harmful it is to women.
It's huge for him to
actually accept that,
and for him to say that.
I'm going to be the first baby
in my family to
not go through FGM.
My dad agreed not
to cut baby Khadija.
I am still yet to process it,
because I don't even
know how to take this in.
(speaking foreign language)
No, seriously.
You sure?
High five, okay,
bye bye, good night.
(triumphant music)
(children clapping)
(upbeat music)
(speaking foreign language)
- I think Jaha is a
young woman of destiny.
There aren't that
many people like Jaha
who can surmount
all of the obstacles
within the context
of her culture.
- Three days after I met with
most of his cabinet members,
I received a call that
the president was about
to make a big
announcement about FGM.
- For 21 years, I've
been reciting to see
where it is stated in the
Quran that this should happen.
I've not seen it.
As from today, FGM is
banned as from today
from the surface
of this country.
- The president of
the country of Gambia
has just declared a ban on FGM.
- I want Gambia to
know how proud I am,
and how happy I am
that this happened.
And today, I wanted to
thank His Excellency,
on behalf of all the girl
children of The Gambia.
He told me that what his
daughter will not go through,
he won't see another
girl child go through.
And to me, that says everything.
This is going to change
lives in The Gambia.
It's going to save a lot
of young girl children.
Knowing that I played a role
in that was just amazing.
- Jaha's campaign together
with Safe Hands for Girls
is very important
because if the president
is now denouncing the practice,
it's because young people
have taken the lead.
- So think this is not the
end of our work as activists.
We want to go into
the communities,
and make sure the
people are aware.
The president has done his
part, now it's up to us.
- What Jaha's
already accomplished
at the tender age of 25 is
nothing short of extraordinary.
It is extraordinary, and it's
nothing short of a miracle.
- Banning FGM is huge.
Now, at least, girls
like my Khadija
in The Gambia will have
a chance against FGM.
But we need to maintain a
active campaign on the ground.
The problem is, a
lot of times we find
that countries ban FGM, but
they don't implement the law.
We need to build
on the momentum,
to make sure that the government
actually implements it.
This is just the beginning.
It's not over yet, until
all the girls are protected.
(Khadija laughs)
(upbeat music)
This is our Africa.
We're doing it for ourselves.
We're doing it for
our daughters, our
sisters, our mothers.
That what we are
doing, and it's simple.
(mellow music)
(upbeat music)