The Birth of an Empowerment of Women in Ethiopia

The story of a young Ethiopian woman and her courageous efforts to change the centuries old practice of female circumcision in her community.

Abay at a meeting addressing the Anti-Harmful Traditional Practices Association. © Phil Borges More photos>

When Phil Borges, a photographer on assignment in Ethiopia for CARE, first met his interpreter, Abay Amusa,  she seemed quite shy, retiring, and unassuming.

Borges, a UCSF School of Dentistry alumnus turned photographer, soon learned that Abay's shyness extended only to speaking English. Abay, of the Afar people in Ethiopia, had at 28 accomplished more than most would in a lifetime. She achieved an education and became a nurse despite coming from a  people with a two percent literacy rate. She improved her community's infrastructure through her work with CARE, a non-profit that aids impoverished countries. And most importantly, she brought about change to the centuries old practice of salot, a ritual female circumcision of a particularly extreme and brutal type. (Type III)

"After hearing her story," said Borges, whose assignment was to capture and portray the empowerment of women in indigenous cultures, "I realized I had found the person I was looking for."

At the age of ten, Abay had stood up against the tribal elders and refused salot. Her decision enraged her mother who forced her to leave her community to live with a relative. She didn't come back until she was 18 years old when she returned as a CARE station agent to a remote and perennially drought-ridden Afar village .

According to Borges, "over the course of five years she supervised the opening of a primary school and three health posts, the drilling of a well, the construction of an irrigation ditch, and the implementation of an agricultural program." But her "long-term plan" was to rid her community of salot.

"Eventually, very discreetly, she started to discuss salot with some of the women," said Borges.  "It is a strong taboo to even discuss the practice, much less question its necessity.  Eventually a few of the women opened up enough to discuss the advantages of salot.  In their view, it insured virginity at marriage and discouraged rape.  Eventually Abay was able to explore and question the disadvantages with a few of her closest friends. "

Her strategy to bring the issue to the 17 men who rule the community was a bold one. After persuading the women to allow a circumcision ceremony to be videotaped, she showed the video to the elders. The ritual life of Afar men and women is so separate that the men were shocked at what they saw -- girls being held on the dirty ground, hands tightly holding their jaws shut to prevent the screams, no anesthesia, legs being bound.

Howa, the first girl in her family line not to have solat. © Phil Borges More photos>

In November of 2000 a vote was taken by the elders on whether to continue or ban the practice of salot. It was banned by a vote of 15 to 2. Abay left the community a year later to qualify as a nurse so that she could be of even more help to her people.

When in November 2004 Borges accompanied Abay on her first visit back to Awash Fantole in more than two years, she was "treated like a dignitary by the male elders and greeted with squeals and hugs by the normally reserved women." An "Anti-Harmful Traditional Practices Association" was founded to encourage other Afar communities to abandon salot.  Run solely by women, its agenda has now been expanded to include children's education, agriculture techniques and entrepreneurial pursuits.

As a result of Abay's work, Borges would hear one statement repeated over and over regarding their release from this ancient practice, "We were in the dark house and now we have come into the light"

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