00:00Welcome to my channel Shadows of History.
00:03What traditional human practices should be banned forever?
00:06Let me tell you a story that really happened almost 25 years ago.
00:10In 1995, 21-year-old Stephanie Welsh arrived in Kenya to begin a one-year internship at
00:16the Daily Nation, a newspaper in Nairobi.
00:19Female genital mutilation was illegal in Kenya but still widespread and practiced,
00:24so Stephanie decided to learn more about the custom.
00:27She traveled to rural Kenya to live for two weeks with the family of a 16-year-old girl
00:32who was about to undergo mutilation.
00:34The ritual was harrowing.
00:35In a hut made of dung and straw, they gave the girl a drink of milk and blood,
00:40then began cutting her flesh.
00:42The young girl screamed in despair as blood dripped onto the mud floor.
00:46Stephanie Welsh's report was published, though much censored, by a dozen American newspapers,
00:51making the world aware of this barbaric practice.
00:54To this day, female genital mutilation is still considered a form of persecution,
00:59yet it continues to be practiced and every year some two million girls are mutilated,
01:03often with razors or even pieces of glass.
01:06Closely linked to the concept of honor and chastity, it is a practice supported mainly
01:11by women themselves, who often force their daughters to undergo mutilation.
01:15The photo above depicts the young woman, freshly mutilated, trying to observe the wounds inflicted
01:21on her, and is the least crude of the series.
01:23After this experience, Stephanie Welsh gave up her photography career to become a midwife
01:28and help these women in the field.
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