SOMA, Gambia (AP) — When Metta, a mother of six from rural Gambia, heard that lawmakers were considering reversing the country's ban on female genital cutting, a centuries-old practice she underwent as a child and now fiercely opposes, she was determined that her voice be heard.
She packed her bag and boarded a bus to Gambia's capital, Banjul, to join scores of women protesting outside the parliament in the largely Muslim nation of less than 3 million people in West Africa.
“I was standing there with a banner,” she told The Associated Press. “Once we got the news that the ban was kept in place, we danced and cried.”
Gambia was for months rocked by a heated debate on female genital mutilation, or FGM, a cultural rite rooted in concepts about sexual purity and control of women. It was the first time the practice — also known as female circumcision and outlawed in many nations — was publicly discussed. Reversing it would have been a global first.
Eventually, lawmakers killed the proposal by rejecting all its clauses and preventing a final vote on the bill on July 16. Rights groups declared victory but the debate stirred deep angst among women’s activists.
And though the world's attention was focused on the legislative process, the real battle is still going on — quietly fought by people like Metta, far from the parliament’s chambers and across rural areas where activists say FGM is still prevalent and remains a highly sensitive topic.
Women in Gambia's rural hinterland — even those like Metta who cheered in front of the parliament — are reluctant to talk about cutting, fearing a backlash. Some who spoke out against the practice said they received hate messages. When speaking to the AP, women would not give their full names for fear of reprisals.
Local activists are walking a thin line. After agreeing to give the AP full access to an awareness village meeting, they took it back, saying that the foreign journalists' presence could jeopardize their efforts.
The challenges are staggering. The United Nations estimates that about 75% of women in Gambia have been subjected as young girls to FGM, which includes partial or full removal of a girl’s external genitalia. The World Health Organization says it's a form of torture.
The procedure, typically performed by older women or traditional community practitioners, is often done with tools such as razor blades and can cause serious bleeding, death and complications later in life, including in childbirth.
More than 200 million women and girls across the world are survivors of FGM, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.N. estimates. In the past eight years alone, some 30 million women globally have been cut, most of them in Africa but also in Asia and the Middle East, UNICEF said in March.
In 2015, Gambia's former leader Yahya Jammeh — now in exile and accused of human rights violations — unexpectedly banned cutting, giving no explanations.
However, the practice continued. The first prosecutions occurred only last year, when three women were convicted for taking their daughters to be cut, sparking a backlash to the ban and setting off the debate.
Gambian authorities did not respond to a request for comment about the issue.
Supporters of the ban argued that cutting is rooted in Gambia's culture and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Religious conservatives behind the campaign to reverse the ban described cutting as “one of the virtues of Islam."
Those against FGM said its supporters are seeking to curtail women's rights in the name of tradition.
Habibou Tamba, a 37-year-old local activist who attended the rally outside the parliament, said a prominent community member — whom he did not identify — sent him a message afterward, accusing him of serving the interests of the West.
“We will never be subjected to the Western ideology,” said the message, seen by the AP. It added: “This is the beginning of the war.”
But Tamba says that for him, protests were about the right of women to live free from pain, not about Western values.
At the awareness meeting, held at a local government office, activists talked to a few dozen women from neighboring villages about the perils of child marriage and FGM. On the wall, they projected images of deformed female genitalia to explain possible health complications from cutting.
With each picture, women in the room gasped with shock and disgust. But not all were convinced.
“I went through FGM but nothing happened to me,” said one woman. “I have more than five children and I never had any complications.”
“It's our culture and it’s also a part of the teaching of the prophet,” she said, and added that after the ban was introduced, she took her daughter far from their village to be cut in secrecy.
Another woman said the ban was “violating our rights as Muslim women.” Not a single woman at the meeting spoke up in defense of the ban.
Rabietou, a 42-year-old mother of six, was outside nursing her youngest daughter, 7-month-old Fatima.
“I came here because of her,” she said, cradling her baby.
Rabietou's eldest daughter, Aminata, 26, also came. The two had rallied women from their village to come to the meeting. Rabietou recounted how she was cut by a relative when she was a girl, and forced to leave school and get married at the age of 15.
A year later, she gave birth — in excruciating pain — to Aminata, who was also cut and left school early to marry.
“No one told me about the health consequences," Rabietou said.
As she grew more aware of the risks through conversations with activists and other women, she became determined to break the cycle. She said she won't have Fatima cut, and has also advised Aminata not to cut her daughter.
Metta said she was cut when she was 8.
"No one said anything to me, just that it’s tradition,” she said.
She never discussed what happened with anyone. When activists started organizing meetings in her community, it was hard for her to believe what they were saying. But she came to the conclusion it's time to start talking.
Women from her village started to share their experiences and soon discovered they all faced similar struggles: Pain when they were cut. A lot of pain when they were intimate with their husbands. Even more pain when they were giving birth.
In the end, after discussing it with their husbands, most decided to stop the cutting. None of Metta’s four daughters have been cut.
“Before, people used to say: If you don’t cut your daughter, she will not listen. She will not have discipline,” Metta said. “But going to the bush and teaching your children discipline are two very different things."
"I will not let my daughters go through the same pain as I did,” she said.
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Associated Press writer Ramatoulie Jawo in Banjul, Gambia, contributed to this report.
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