Tanzania’s girls flee their families — and marriage
Female circumcision, child marriage, young girls on the run. A new multimedia graphic novel dramatically depicts the trials of tribal Tanzania — and the safe house trying to help.
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Marc Ellison for the Toronto Star
Girls desperate to escape being cut by their families clamber into
the back of a vehicle that will take them to the safe house in Mugumu,
Tanzania.
MUGUMU, TANZANIA—The girls erupt from the
roadside bushes, their brilliant shawls swirling behind them as they
beeline for the idling car.
They clamber into the back, wide-eyed and breathing hard.
School is out, and girls like Dorika are fleeing their families to save their childhoods and, maybe, save their lives.
The cutting season has begun, and safe house staff are busy.
The December rains mark not only the end of
the school term but the start of the four-week period when girls in
Tanzania’s northern Mara region typically are forced to endure female
genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision or, simply,
cutting. Men in the Kurya and Mungurimi tribes are brought up to believe
that msagani — uncut girls — are unclean and unfit for marriage.
“My mother threatened to bind my arms and legs
and have me cut by force if I refused,” says Dorika, speaking through a
translator.
She is 12 years old.
The immersive story
Dorika fled her home in Masinki, two hours
west of Mugumu, two weeks ago, terrified about stories of young girls
bleeding to death, their cursed bodies dumped in the bush where the wild
things are.
Five girls in Machochwe village died during last year’s cutting season — and those are just the reported deaths.
FGM has been illegal in Tanzania since 1998,
but many tribespeople still believe the life-threatening procedure is a
mandatory rite of passage into womanhood — and an indicator to men in
the village the girl is now ready to get married. A 2010 government
survey found that in the Mara region 40 per cent of girls and women had
been cut.
Tanzania does not rank among the countries
with the highest rates of child marriage — four in 10 girls are wed
before their 18th birthdays — but in many regions it is a significant
problem.
Here, in Mara, 55 per cent of girls are forced
into marriages, although the actual figure is likely higher, masked by
the remoteness of rural communities and by corrupt police and court
officials ignoring cases in exchange for bribes.
The lure of lucrative dowries of livestock for
impoverished parents perpetuates the inextricably linked practices of
FGM and child marriage.
Daughters become cash cows, at the expense of a girl’s schooling and health.
Related stories at thestar.com:
Finding sanctuary
Dorika is one of the lucky ones — she made it to the safe house.
Funded by donations from the Anglican Church,
construction of this sanctuary was barely completed in time for the
cutting season in December 2014. It offers girls not only refuge during
the cutting season but, with two classrooms, a temporary return to
normal life.
But the safe house has become a victim of its
own success. What began as a trickle of girls has rapidly turned into a
flood. Designed for 40 occupants, more than 160 girls like Dorika fled
to Mugumu in December. At night, the classrooms transform into makeshift
dormitories where girls sleep three to a bed.
“We don’t have a big budget, and yet the girls keep coming, coming, coming,” says co-ordinator Rhobi Samwelly.
Samwelly feels unable to turn any of them away. She was only 13 when she was pushed into FGM by her parents.
“I thought about running away,” she says. “But where could I go, how would I get food, where would I sleep?”
Abuse and pain
A young woman named Mama Mary faced the same dilemma more than 10 years ago.
She was forced to undergo FGM at age 11 and
was married to an older husband at 13. Starting from their wedding
night, Mama Mary was subjected to a decade of physical and sexual
violence — all for the price of 10 cows.
“I think he beat me harder than any other
woman has been beaten,” Mary says, revealing a gap where three teeth
were knocked out by her husband.
She begged him to end the violence.
“I will only stop beating you when our first
daughter undergoes FGM,” he told her. “Then the dowry I paid for you
will be repaid.”
Her husband is now in jail, but life is still hard for Mama Mary.
With three young children, her only income is from making charcoal which she sells in town for a dollar a bag.
“They learn about computers and tailoring,”
she says wistfully of the girls at the safe house. “Things that could
have given a better life for me and my kids.”
That’s the hope for girls like Dorika. Their schooling continues, and they’re making new friends.
They are rediscovering what it means to be children.
An excerpt from a graphic novel about FGM in
Tanzania by Marc Ellison and Daniel Lafrance. See the full story at
bit.ly/SafeHouseComic
About the project
Funding
The graphic novel, stories and videos about
child marriage and FGM in Tanzania were produced with aid from the
$25,000 International Development Reporting Fellowship. The fellowship
is part of Aga Khan Foundation Canada’s public engagement programming,
which aims to help Canadians gain a better understanding of
international development issues. The program gets financial support
from the Canadian government.
Marc Ellison was awarded one of two inaugural
fellowships to report on the complex topic of child marriage in Tanzania
through the medium of an interactive, multimedia graphic novel.
The project has been translated into Swahili
in the hope it can be used as an educational tool in the communities
where FGM and child marriage still thrive.
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Marc Ellison
Ellison is an award-winning photojournalist
based in Glasgow, Scotland. He has worked extensively in Africa since
2011, reporting on female child soldiers in Uganda, sex workers in
Mozambique and Sudanese refugee camps. Ellison has produced work for 60
Minutes, Al Jazeera, BBC, the Guardian, the Toronto Star, the Globe and
Mail and Vice.
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Daniel Lafrance
Lafrance is a professional storyboard artist
with more than 30 years in the animation industry. In 2014, his graphic
novel adaptation of Sharon E. McKay’s novel War Brothers — about
children forced to become child soldiers for the LRA in Uganda — was
nominated for an Eisner Award. Originally from Quebec, he now lives in
Toronto with his wife and son.
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