60 Bondo without Cutting Ambassadors has on Friday 4 August 2023 graduated and showcased from the Bondo without Cutting at Rosengbeh village, Port Loko District, Northwestern Sierra Leone. The initiates who are between 19 to 33, are the third batch expected to be initiated into the ‘Bondo’ society without female genital mutilation. Among them initiates are lactating mothers and students who formed part of the third initiates for the alternative rites of passage.
The ceremony attracted development partners including preventatives from Irish Aid, United Kingdom, German Embassies and the Ministries of Development and Economic Planning and Soweis, community stakeholders.
Addressing participants at the event, the Director of the Amazonian Initiative Movement Sierra Leone (AIM-SL) said the 60 initiates are the third batch of successful initiates without any harm during the initiation processes.
She said the Bondo without cutting is supported by PfefferminGreen and BMZ, a German organization.
She added that the project encompasses with the replace bondo bushes with schools, construction of water wells, skill training centers and a host of their projects just to make women stronger in their localities.
She said the initiates went through thorough screening processes before they were accepted to be part of the initiation processes.
According to Turay, FGM is a practice that have retrogressed women in the country, adding that when people go to the hospitals and other medical facilities, most women on hospital beds are victims of the practice.
She said apart from medical implications, politicians have in the past brainwashed women, supporting them to undertake FGM practices while their daughters attend good oversea schools and universities.
She maintained that women have suffered economic and psychological problems due to FGM practices, stressing the need to ensure that such heinous tradition and cultures are abolished. Turay disclosed that her organization is working alongside the Ministries of Planning Economic and Development, Ministry Health and Sanitation as well as Social Welfare Ministry in ensuring that the practices are mitigated to allow women to thrive on strongly. Ministries and donor partners who entreated the initiates on why they are trying to protect their clitoris.
Ishmael Cole thanked the PfefferminGreen and BMZ organizations for their intervention and support to AIM-SL for such huge projects to save women and girls.
He appealed to partners for further support adding that these small organizations can produce results.
One of the initiates, Marie Kamara said no one was tortured inside the bush, and that they learned new things they were not aware of while in the bush.
“They showed us how to prepare food, how to sweep- we were taught how to greet and respect elders,” she added.
She furthered that they were asked to collect wood for the chiefs and other elders as tradition demands.
‘What I passed through in that bush would make me survive any difficulties in my marriage and other places in the society;’, she affirmed.
She advised parents not to force their children into FGM and support the Alternative Rite of Passage.
Agness Kanu, a Sowei who has been initiating young girls into the Bondo society for the past 25 years said at some point she was jailed for six months for allegedly killing an eighteen-year-old girl during initiation.
“Since that time I quit the practice, but later joined bloodless bondo process to sensitize other Soweis to stop the cutting aspect, because Bondo is still complete without cutting”, she said.
Soweis representative from Bonthe District, Representative from the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development and Community, Chief and other stakeholders all made delivered salient statements regarding the harmful traditional practices.
The ceremony climax by showcasing the 60 bloodless bondo initiates, dancing, and celebrations with the new graduands in the view of thousands of people in the village.
