African Culture and Traditions as Told by Waris Dirie :: Waris Dirie Africa Rituals Cultural Essays

African Culture and Traditions as Told by Waris DirieWaris Dirie was born into a family of nomads in a Somalian desert. Growing up, she was internal to run free with natures most majestic animals, and intentional a respect for nature that many of us as Americans could neer fathom. However, these thrills be just on the surface of what support is really worry for African women. She suffered through intense tralatitious mutilation in her childhood, and endless hours of sonorous labor in the fields everyday. At the age of 13, she ran away to leave out the marriage that her father had arranged for her to a sixty-year-old man in de lay outise for pentad camels. She left with nothing but the swaddling clothes on her patronise not even shoes to protect her feet from the scorching African sun. Her travel on foot went on for weeks, until she found her sister, who had also ran away five years earlier for the same reasons. After getting reacquainted with an aunt and her embassador husband, Waris moved to England with them. When her uncles term was up, she stayed in England where a photographer, who eventually put her on the cover many major magazines, discovered her. In describing her curious journey through life, Waris demonstrates examples of a masculine culture with elements high uncertainty-avoidance, and her take individualism amongst such a collectivistic society. Wariss description of life in Africa is a perfect definition for a masculine culture. She explains, Women are the backbone of Africa they do most of the work. Yet women are powerless to brighten decisions. She recalls a story of how her loving get down permitted her to be butchered, because of a traditional African ritual to please African men. When she was five years old, her aim made her an appointment to meet with the gypsy women. Waris didnt know precisely what this meant, but it was supposedly an exciting moment in the lives of new-fashioned African girls, and when they return ed, they were considered women. Waris recalls in graphic detail being bound and blind-folded by her mother while the gypsy women sliced between her legs repeatedly, then sewed her up, going a whole the size of a match-head. She was then drug collide with to a shelter under a bush where she spent weeks only to recuperate. Sadly, this is not an isolated case, millions of nomadic cultures still perform the ritual, and many young girls do not survive the surgery.