Book Review: Desert Flower

So I just fininshed reading Desert Flower by Waris Dirie. Waris Dirie is a runway model turned UN special ambassador. Now before you all start getting craxy and thinking this is another Angelinia Jolie moment, this chick has a legitimate claim to her title because of her life in Somalia and she basically became a supermodel my accident. Luckily for her, her fame and close relationship with the media is helping amplify her voice. This is an amazing story about her life as in Somalia as a nomad then by chance ending up in London as her uncle's maid (to excape an arranged marriage) to being discovered and becoming a supermodel all the while basically being illiterate and suffering from medical problems associated with female circumcision. You folks, you read that right...her "hoo-haw" was sawed off at the age of 5 then sewn shut.

There's not much more I can say about that but I have heard about this practice before and that it happens in Moslem areas of Africa. It's oftentimes done in unsanitary conditions with crude insturments and many young girls die. Once sewn shut, they suffer a vast majority or problems because they have difficulting urinating and menstruating. When these girls get married, their husbands basically tear them open for sex then sew them back up...when they get pregnant, there is fear of trying to deliver a baby through a non-existent hole. Once again, many women die.

It's amazing that these things happen. I can understand strange rituals for religions that I may not understand or not agree with. But no religion is honestly about maiming and putting their own congregation in harms way. Even the historically over zealous Catholics with their crusades only killed other people, not their own.