When it comes to Somalia, most people's first reaction is pirates.
Not as cool as Pirates of the Caribbean, piracy is a super risky business. Why are there so many pirates in Somalia? because of poverty.
Poverty and ignorance are often interrelated.
I only found out when I watched the movie "Desert Flower" nearly ten years ago that there is still a cruel and bad practice in this world, called circumcision, which is simply equivalent to the operation of female genitalia without any anesthesia. Castration is prevalent in African countries such as Somalia, but also in some Asian countries.
A total of 130 million women around the world are affected by this, and countless women die from this bad habit. But in those backward places, everyone has long been accustomed to it.
More than 6,000 girls are still being circumcised every day. If 6 billion people in the world and half of them are women, then 4.3% of women in the world have been circumcised.
4.3% is not a small number. I can't help but think, what if I was born in that land and became the 4.3%?
Suddenly I felt that the sky was a lot bluer now, and the whole world was extremely beautiful.
"Desert Flower" is based on the autobiographical novel of supermodel Waris Dirie. Born in Somalia, she was accidentally discovered by photographer Terence Donovan and has since become a model. In 1996, she launched a campaign against female genital mutilation, known as the "African feminist fighter".
The film was filmed by female director Sheryl Holman. It used an interlude to tell the story of Wallis walking out of Africa, becoming a world supermodel and calling for the abolition of circumcision. The interpretation of Wallis is also a world famous model: Leah Kebede from Ethiopia.
Wallis was born in the Somali desert, the daughter of a shepherd, and was circumcised at the age of three. The little girl who didn't know anything, was given more rice than usual the day before, but was beaten to hell the next day. She cried, screamed, and struggled but couldn't break free from her mother's pressure.
Circumcised, she lay bleeding in the vast desert, sick with a high fever, and nearly died—her mother went back to care for her siblings.
When she was twelve or thirteen years old, an old man gave her a few camels as a dowry, and she was going to be married to him as his fourth wife. She couldn't tell where the courage came from. She fled in the dark, walked barefoot in the desert for several days and nights, and almost died again.
The footage in this section is very beautiful, the vast desert, the tiny girl, and the helpless but firm escape. If you appreciate it from an artistic point of view, you will feel so beautiful, but if you see the story behind the camera, you will only feel sympathy and fear.
I remember walking through the desert in Zhongwei, Ningxia, and the sand at noon could burn my feet like fire. Looking at the pictures in the movie, the desert in Somalia is not the kind of soft fine sand, but rough and hard ground, which is not only hot, but also sweltering. She ran away in the desert like this, eating leaves when she was hungry.
Glad she survived. The scars left on the feet are still very scary after becoming a model.
Fortunately, she came to the UK as the maid of the Somali ambassador in London, and insisted on staying in the UK. Since then, she has seen a different world and changed her destiny. And this luck comes from her own hard work.
In her native Africa, more people are ignorantly endured by bad habits. Like her mother, she suffered cruel torture herself, and even added it to her daughter, because she firmly believed that it was for her daughter's good. It's a bit like footbinding in ancient China, but even scarier than footbinding. Foot binding may be a pain in childhood, and the pain is no longer felt after the feet are formed, but circumcision can make women suffer for a lifetime, especially during sex and childbirth.
The long-term oppression and restraint made Wallis ashamed to express, or even ashamed to accept, her favorable impression of the opposite sex, and finally missed the man who might have touched her.
She herself had ignorantly believed that sex was shameful and that all women should be circumcised. Until she met Marilyn, a kind English girl.
If we don't see it with our own eyes, we who live in modern society can't imagine how miserable it is to still live in the "old society", just as those women who live in the "old society" can't imagine how happy it is to live in modern society.
Seeing the beauty of the new world, Wallis is even more afraid of being sent back to Africa. Fortunately, she has the most primitive capital - beautiful, so beautiful that she was excavated by famous photographers, and she has since embarked on the road of modeling. She is radiant under the camera, you can't imagine what a bad place she once grew up in.
This world is of course unfair. Women already have to bear more due to their physical constitution and social customs, and in some more backward places, they face a more terrifying situation. However, being a woman is not a choice.
Wallis is unfortunate, but also fortunate, because of her pain and struggle, she finally got the feedback from the goddess of luck, but I believe that in those countries that are shrouded in bad habits, there are more women who have suffered, After struggling, in the end, he could only unfortunately spend his life in obscurity.
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