What are other misconceptions you encounter around the practice?

"People usually think it happens in one country in Africa, but Africa has 54 countries, and of those 54, about 30 to 40 practice FGM. Some people are surprised when we say to them wherever FGM occurs, there is always a prerequisite for other forms of violence, like forced marriage or child marriage. People think there are drums, that you go into the bush — I never went into the bush. Look in the communities where this is happening, and speak to the women. No one used to speak to survivors or victims, about how they felt, what it meant for them."

What kind of care is important for survivors?

"It’s to deal with the psychological impact... People talk a lot about the physical, but for some people, it’s the psychological. The smells, the screams, even colors can bring people to be at that place where they remember their FGM. We don’t have a lot of those provisions at the moment — psychological support, a trauma center — because it’s abuse that happened to someone when they were little. A lot of people don’t know the extent. Every single day, there are girls as young as a year old whose genitalia are being cut off. It’s gone forever. Biologically the clitoris, there’s parts of it still embedded underneath the skin, but an operation cannot give you [back] the same sort of design that God gave us. When you tamper with that, you destroy the spirit of a human being, and if it’s done to many women at such an early age, their self and their worth and their well-being are gone.

"In most communities where FGM is practiced, the girl-child is a possession. The only person who is not involved in that decision is the girl-child or the woman. Communities come together and say, ‘Let’s correct this child, because she maybe is promiscuous or unclean — we need her to be married off.’

"If they’ve cut your body to a point where it’s scarred and someone is trying to penetrate, say, your vagina, and you’ve got all these scar tissues, scar tissues tend to itch and even hurt sometimes... The skin around our vagina is the most sensitive part of a woman’s body... Sometimes someone just mentions something to you, they just mention something and you feel traumatized. We want to create a safe space for the women to talk about this so that they can then identify other issues that could be happening with them, whether identifying mental illness — most women with that sort of abuse suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, and if they go through labor they’re most likely to suffer from postpartum depression. There’s also the risk of infection and tearing — whether through intercourse or babies. It’s a thin covering between the vagina and anus, and sometimes depending on how women are cut, that part of their body can be destroyed, which is why you hear of fistula."

How do sex and pleasure factor into this conversation?

"[Women who undergo FGM] are deprived of our pleasure. We didn’t ask for that. We don’t want that. We want to have pleasure. You can still have pleasure, don’t get me wrong, even without [the external part of] your clitoris, because the body’s an entire pleasure machine. Because we’ve been told now that we’ve undergone FGM so that we won’t feel pleasure, though, we receive that message and it just doesn’t go away. When pleasure does come, you don’t connect. It’s embedded in our head that we shouldn’t feel pleasure. But women do feel pleasure, with or without FGM.

"I was told from an early age, the word pleasure is haram, is forbidden — Don’t say it, shut your mouth, don’t say it, keep quiet, why are you saying that? Do you know it’s not accepted? Even if women have pleasure, they’re not going to say it. Pleasure is marred and tainted and it’s seen as something so bad when it’s not — it’s natural for us to feel pleasure, having sex or not having sex."

What is your approach to initiating the conversation about FGM in community trainings?

"I try to bring a bit of humor. We really don’t want to upset women, because it’s hard, so we look at sort of a holistic approach when we’re talking with women. I don’t go into communities and say, ‘Can we just talk about FGM?’ They will tell you, ‘Well, I’m not ready to talk to you.’ But I go in and say, ‘What is your issue?’ Some people, maybe it’s immigration. It may be housing. Some people may want to move houses because they live in social housing that’s just not in good shape... I’ve worked in challenging environments for most of my life in the U.K., so I can tell the women that are like me and where they’re likely to be found, and I know exactly what they need. People go in without cultural understanding. If you’re going to go talk to African women, you’ve got to know where they’re coming from. It’s a lived experience. It’s good that people are talking FGM, or forced marriage, or rape, but until you have been raped, you cannot feel the emotions that come with rape. You cannot feel the emotions that come with FGM. I sit in the middle of women and say, ‘I’m just like you.’ They get it. And I put them through to services that would be of help."