Trinidad surgeon helps women escape past of mutilation

[Shana A]

Trinidad surgeon helps women escape past of mutilation
Karen Auge
The Denver Post
Posted: 03/07/2010 01:00:00 AM MST

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14527014

She is 26 and lives with her husband and daughter in Virginia, and didn't want her last name used. Originally, she is from Guinea, a country about the size of Oregon on Africa's western coast. Guinea has about 10 million residents, and about 96 percent
of the women there have, like Mariama, been genitally mutilated.

Mariama and the six other women, all originally from Africa, crowding Dr. Bowers' tiny Trinidad clinic have traveled a long way to get that fixed. The women have come to this former coal-mining town in southern Colorado looking for more than just reconstructive surgery. They want relief from pain. They are looking for a chance, as one put it, to be normal.

[Arch]

...the practice involves at least slicing off part or all of the exposed clitoris.

Not true. Some forms of FGM do not involve any mutilation of this organ.

[Butterfly]

Trinidad surgeon helps women escape past of mutilation
Denver Post
By Karen Auge
07 March, 2010


http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14527014


Dr. Marci Bowers slipped into a chair in Exam Room 3, folded one long leg over another, looked at her patient — a young woman with wide eyes and a nervous smile — and got to the point.

"We want to help make your life better," Bowers said.

Mariama is as tiny as the 5-foot-10-inch Bowers is formidable, as soft-spoken as Bowers is confident. Mariama speaks softly and smiles easily, but a few hours with her make clear that her determination is as strong as it is quiet.