Dropping the Knife: Gambia Our World

genital mutilation in Gambia. We follow local activists as they try

to persuade professional cutters to put an end to the centuries`old

tradition. 140 million women worldwide at elite

to be suffering from the consequences of having been

genitally mutilated. The majority in Africa.

In essence, it is about control over women's bodies, control of a

pleasure for women. It is often condoned by governments, and

encouraged by religious leaders. In Europe, female genital mutilation is

illegal, and yet the European government appears reluctant to help

those who flee Africa, because they don't want to mutilate young girls.

I said to my mind, I will never do it. Why doesn't the outside world do

more to help those communities in Africa who want to stop female

mutilations? A village in the Gambia celebrates

the decision to drop the knife, as they call it here. The songs were

written decades ago, to applaud the skill of the cutters and their duty

to purify young girls. The women here have been persuaded by local

campaigners to abandon the custom. They have changed the lyrics, to

rejoice in the chants of sexual fulfilment and freedom from pain,

now offered to the next generation. So why, 3000 miles away, is Fatima,

a 23 of mother the Gambia, seeking asylum in the UK? She doesn't want

to show her face, because she doesn't want the neighbours in the

north of England where she lives with her three`year`old daughter, to

know that she has been cut. It happened when I was nearly ten, and

they would take you, to the bush, . 200 of us were taken, most of us

primary school kids. They would just lay you down, holding your legs, two

people holding your legs. Then they would just cut it. And then, that is

it. And you cry for the rest of the day. Can you describe the pain?The

pain was more painful than giving birth, because you have to live with

it for the rest of your life. Why are you claiming asylum in this

country? Because I think it is not right to be cut, and I fear that my

daughter will be cut we go back to Gambia. Why are you so frightened?

If we go back to Gambia, might daughter will have no chance to stay

there without being cut. Although the threat of female genital

mutilation is recognised in the UK as a reason for asylum, Fatima has

been rejected. She and her daughter could be deported any day. I go to

the Gambia to find out if Fatima is telling the truth about the threat

to her daughter. This woman, from a campaign against traditional

practices in Gambia, explains that they persuaded about a third of the

community here to drop the knife. But, through lack of resources,

there are many areas they have not yet reached, including the village

where Fatima comes from. It isn't difficult to get to Fatima's

village, about one hour's drive from the capital, Banjul. But no British

journalist has made the journey. She is in no doubt as to what will

happen if her daughter and granddaughter return.

If your daughter comes back here and says she does not want her daughter

to be cut... And what if they were to come here to Fatima's village, to

start a campaign to stop female genital mutilation? Do you think it

will work? We can't say, says this woman. It is up to our elders. It is

our tradition, says another, we can't change anything.

She explains to the man in charge here the avoidable health problems

associated with female genital mutilation. Children dying from loss

of blood and infection, and death in childbirth, all of which are

normally blamed on witchcraft. They listen and tell her she can come

again for another meeting. From here it could take four years to arrive

at a formal agreement to drop the knife. If it is stopped here, this

would be the last batch of girls who would the victims and survivors of

female genital mutilation. Gambia is a tiny country that runs along the

banks of the River Gambia. The campaign to stop female genital

mutilation has had its greatest effect here. This woman explains

why. They are left alone in their own corner, doing whatever they were

doing, no one exposes them to any information. Luckily, when we

intervene, we are able to get information to them, we were able to

engage with the information, internalise it, express themselves.

Then they realised this was the truth. The stone circles of Gambia

tell of a syllable `` civilisation thousands of years old. Despite 20

years of campaigning, the organisation believes that 80% of

girls in the country are at risk of being cut today. What is the

reasoning behind the practice? It is about control over female sexuality.

Controlling them from the pressure they get out of the erogenous zones,

it is about adjoining sex, the integrity of the woman, something

that is very powerful. You will find that the essence is all about

control over women's bodies, control over pleasure for women. The

organisation invitee to go with them to the northern bank of the river.

They want to show me how they try to persuade those who do the cutting to

change jobs. We meet with a group of cutters. Some of the thousands

employed in the country. This group tell the woman that they enjoy the

respect they get in the community. And, were well paid, says one. $3

per child, plus a bag of rice and closing. I cut 40 children this

year, says another. I cut my granddaughter, and look how well she

looks. Cutters admit to cutting girls sent

here from abroad to be mutilated, even though that is a crime in the

UK. She took me to see the local cutting

filled out in the bush. `` cutting field.

She showed me a tree with notches, each one a record of a Charles who

had been cut. `` a child who had been cut.

But if the girls are sitting there waiting, and they hear the girl

being cut screaming, why don't they run away?

But she no longer comes here to cut. She has been persuaded by a

$150 grant from GAMCOTRAP to invest in a bakery which pays enough money

to stop working as a cutter. So far, no one in the village has

come forward to take place and the girls remain intact. `` take her

place. In a nearby village, this woman was also tempted by a similar

grant to become a goat herd. How many girls did she cut? `` goat

herd. `` goat herder. It is hard to understand why, at the

cost of just $150 to persuade a cutter to change jobs, more help is

not given to those who are trying to fix the problem before it drives are

we meant to ask for a silent in the UK. `` before it drives are women to

ask for a silent in the UK. In West London, at a shelter to asylum

seekers from all over the world, a 40 `year`old woman from the Gambia

has fled her destiny to be eight cutter like a grandmother and her

mother who trained her to uphold the family tradition. When I was like,

15, I started cutting the girls and seeing what happened. That is when I

started training. I was going to school and they had to stop me going

to school. I would look after the girls. She told me she too came from

a village not far from the capital. The trouble is, we have not any

impact here yet. We have had a programme with young people once. We

have not had the great support we have had in other regions. I made my

way to the village where I found a woman who took me to wear her sister

was trained and where the cutting that took place. She opened a box

filled with dirty rags. What are these things?

The brakes are also used to blindfold the children so they

cannot see who is cutting them. `` the rags. They have been used

recently by another Carter. The cutting takes place here? It was

after my `` this woman was required to hold her five`year`old daughter

that she decided to run away. She was screaming and calling, mamma.

There is nothing that mum can do. Tears were coming to my eyes. I said

to myself, whatever happens, I cannot do this. If I tell it to the

people, would not here so I just kept it in my mind this thing... I

would never, never do it. I would never do it. And that is when I ``

she believes she will be killed when she returns home. Her younger sister

is angry with her, complaining that her daughter is waiting to be cut

and there are other cousins waiting because in their family, only she

can do it. I was taken to meet her children.

Five of them who now win with a family friend away from the village

and the hostility they are. They have not seen their mother since she

fled to the UK four years ago. I met your mum, she sent her love to you

and she is thinking about you a lot. She is thinking about you all the

time and says that she misses you a lot. Do you understand?They

understand. The children are suffering? They are suffering. They

are sad. I have to comfort them. I do not know when or if the mother

will come. I miss my children a lot. And I know they miss me. If I go

home to do the cutting, And I know they miss me. If I go

Sometimes I think for my kids, I have to go back and continue the

cutting but when I think of that, because of my children, how many

girls am I going to cut? How many girls am I going to affect? How many

girls might going to put in the where I am in? Then, there are the

threats against it should she returned. I asked her older sister

what would happen. Your mother decided that the second

daughter should be the Carter. Her mother and others in the community

confirmed to be that she would be punished if she returned and refuse

to cut the UK border agency do not believe her story and have rejected

her asylum claim. She now faces deportation from the UK back here to

the Gambia. The British government say they do support the fight

against FGM in the Gambia but they do not comment on individual asylum

cases. But, in rejecting both these women, the UK border agency revealed

a woeful ignorance of the situation here. They told of the women to

return to the Gambia and simply relocate. They have been advised to

go and live in the capital and to socialise our monk educated groups.

`` amongst. At either woman is educated and Gambia is a country of

just 1.5 million people ` all of whom are identified by their tried

and community. Gambia it is a very small country. The government will

not look after you when you have to live on your own and me, being

somebody who did not go to school that much, the only way can live

there is maybe to be a prostitute. As a single mother, they will

clarify `` qualify you as a bad woman. Will not be part of society.

The border agencies say it is a safer the women to return to the

Gambia but FGM is illegal here. The president runs an autocratic style

of government and has recently withdrawn from the Commonwealth,

accusing it of being neocolonial. He has boasted in the past that he

could cure HIV/Aids by the laying of his hand and the FGM is part of the

culture. The chief imam creatures that FGM is inscribed in Islamic law

and that genital mutilation is good for women. Why?

I have had a clitoris to 60 years and it has never happened to me. It

would be funny, except that the imam has ordered his community not to

attend any meetings organised by GAMCOTRAP. The anti` FGM campaign

have argued that cutting is not part of the Muslim religion. They asked

the opinion of some of the most respect that religious authorities

in the Islamic world. We have got given an imam from Saudi Arabia in

2005. He came and he was questioned about it and he said they did not do

that in Saudi Arabia and we all look to Saudi Arabia. If it is not a

practice done that, I do not see why religion should be the reason. What

is happening in Gambia, for me, it is not correct. It is hard not to

get caught up in the euphoria when a community does, against all the

odds, agreed to drop the knife. But the reality is, it will be a long,

hard fight before the campaigners can celebrate the Gambia is an FGM

free country. They argue that a more humane to, and lightened approach by

the Gambia government, their religious leaders and their former

colonisers in the UK, would go a long way to read Gambia of this

brutal crack this. `` to read the Gambia.

unpretty double. You will have rain, sunshine, wind but the good

news is that where the sun does come out, it will feel relatively warm

least across the majority of the country. As far as the night is

concerned, it is a wet across the UK. Waiters across Scotland. Through

the course of Saturday, rain across the west of Scotland but she was

around. This band of rain will be crossing of Wales and eventually end

up in Northern Ireland by the middle of the afternoon. A good it cracks

of thunder but