Ever Heard Of Fistula

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While working on my final-year project on the portrayal of trauma in Female Genital Mutilation as depicted in Desert Flower (2009), I believed my focus was clear. But research has a way of pulling you beyond what you think you are studying.
In examining FGM, I encountered other forms of violence women endure. That was how I found Dry by Stephanie Linus.
I watched it in a small room with a friend. The experience was not casual, and it has stayed with me. The film traces a familiar and brutal sequence: child marriage, early pregnancy, prolonged labour, fistula, and the loss of a child at birth. But the deepest wound came after. The leaking. The isolation. The shame. Being locked away and labelled cursed for surviving.
Fistula is not a spiritual punishment or moral failure. It is a medical condition, often caused by obstructed labour, early childbirth, and inadequate access to quality healthcare. And it is curable.
Yet many women live with it in silence. Not because treatment does not exist, but because stigma is easier than care. Because communities choose exile over empathy. Because women’s suffering has been normalised for generations.
This reality is inseparable from FGM, child marriage, and medical negligence. These are not isolated practices; they are connected outcomes of systems that devalue girls and women. Each one reinforces the next.
We continue to uncover these injustices, but discovery alone is insufficient. Awareness does not heal bodies or restore dignity. Action does.
FGM can be eradicated.
Fistula can be treated.
Child marriage can be ended.
But only if we stop disguising harm as culture, neglect as tradition, and silence as strength.
Silence is not neutral.
It sustains violence.

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#EndFGM #EndFistula #StopChildMarriage #WomensRights #GirlsDeserveBetter #BreakTheSilence #HealthIsAHumanRight #EmpowerWomen #HerBodyHerRight #ChangeHerStory