Aissa Edon, 32, was pinned down and mutilated when she was just\u00a0 six-years-old. \u201cI remember everything about it,\u201d she says, \u201cthe place, the\u00a0 smell, being held down. I remember screaming \u2013 it sounded like someone else, but\u00a0 it was me \u2013 and I remember blood and intense pain. Pain I can\u2019t even\u00a0 describe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now a midwife in London specialising in FGM, she is happy to speak\u00a0 openly to Cosmo<\/em>\u00a0about her experiences. \u201cI was living in Mali when\u00a0 my stepmother took me to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). I was being\u00a0 adopted by a family in France and it happened before I went away \u2013 a kind of\u00a0 terrible going-away present. My one-year-old sister had it done then, too.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I arrived in France, my adopted parents knew straight away \u2013\u00a0 a section of my medical records was sealed, marked \u2018do not open\u2019, and the FGM\u00a0 was included there. I was very lucky to be in France because I had a lot of\u00a0 complications \u2013 pain for months afterward, urinary tract infections, and\u00a0 psychological problems. To this day, I can\u2019t look at a razor blade, and for\u00a0 years I carried the guilt of what happened to my sister, wondering whether she\u2019d\u00a0 have escaped FGM if I hadn\u2019t been leaving.<\/p>\n \u201cI had surgery in 2004 to correct my urinary problems, and\u00a0 reconstructive surgery to my clitoris in 2005. The first time I knew it was\u00a0 working, I was walking down the street and I felt something strange happening\u00a0 down below! I still have some psychological issues, and intimacy is difficult at\u00a0 times \u2013 my body is working just fine, but my head shuts down.\u201d<\/p>\n