The Girl Becomes A Woman Poem by Bashiru Charles Bakin

Divination is positive
Ancestors have accepted the sacrifice of blood
Penultimate preparations underway
Dancing ensues from dusk to dawn
Morrow, the girls become women

Hour of suffering and rebirth has arrived
Girls are resigned as they wait to be cut
With their initiation girls become women
And will reproduce and conserve the perpetuity of her tribe
Fertility is positive, Sterility negative

Woman must be like the soil, fertile
A girl is not born a woman, she becomes one
Via contact with the earth and her offspring
She is the home keeper
Elderly wisdom is the source of their initiation

Why do they do it?
Dominant male demands it, solemn law of female fertility demands it
Perchance, laws governing procreation that forbid the female from enjoying copulation
Many reasons, some more sound than others all enveloped in misery
Most evident is the cruelty of this ritual

Asked why they do it, they respond
It’s been with us and continues to be
Sisters, daughters and granddaughters paying for the right to become women
By cutting the male element present in the female is completely eliminated
Soon she will marry, give birth and have a family

One more dance
Rhythm frenetic, music earsplitting
Maybe it serves to veil the girls’ screams
And so avoid reawakening the painful memories in the older women
Pain strengthens youth and leads to maturity

The deep is filled in
Mother earth who nourishes the living and receives the late
Accepts this mysterious blood sacrifice as well
Being is suffering and the young must be conditioned to face it sans fear
Screams gradually fading, the girls are now women, drumming continues