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Three decades later, after a career as a supermodel and human rights
activist, Waris Dirie is planning to go home to Africa.
“I dream of having my own farm and lodge in Tanzania, near Mount
Kilimanjaro,” she said in an interview with The Sunday Times last week. “I am
convinced that my beautiful continent has more potential than most people
imagine.”
Born to a family of nomadic goat herders, Dirie, 44, has led an extraordinary
life: she was “discovered” in London by a fashion photographer who gave her his
card in a burger bar where she was sweeping up.
The “nomad to supermodel” story is the subject of Desert Flower, a film that
opened last week in Paris.
It has shocked audiences with its portrayal of the pivotal moment in Dirie’s
life when, as a three-year-old, she was subjected to ritual genital mutilation
by a woman wielding a worn razor.
Liya Kebede, an Ethiopian model, plays Dirie in the film. Dirie cried at the
first viewing. The film is based on her autobiography of the same name and also
stars Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson, the British actors.
“It was very disturbing and emotional, especially scenes from my childhood,”
Dirie said. “It is a barbaric crime,” she added, talking about female
circumcision. “It’s incredible it is still happening now in the 21st
century.”
Since abandoning the catwalk, Dirie, who lives in Austria, has campaigned for
an end to the practice. She hopes the film will promote indignation at “an
especially cruel form of suppressing women” that claimed the life of one of her
sisters, who bled to death after being circumcised.
“I have reached a lot of people,” she said, referring to her role as a United
Nations special ambassador and recipient of numerous humanitarian awards, as
well as France’s Légion d’Honneur. “But those who could really change something,
the politicians, do not seem willing to act. Not in Europe and even less in
Africa, Asia and in the Middle East.”
She hopes the film will be shown everywhere in Africa but says “eradicating
female genital mutilation can only happen there if the living conditions of the
people and the social and legal status of women improve”.
The film’s director was determined to make the childhood scenes as authentic
as possible and these were shot in Djibouti, which shares a border with Somalia.
Local families were used as extras and a circumciser was found who was filmed
with her razor.
After the “operation”, Dirie was sewn up with a thorn and thread to ensure
she would stay a virgin until her husband “opened” her with a knife on her
wedding night. When she reached 13 she decided to flee rather than submit to the
old man who had paid five camels.
She walked to Mogadishu, the capital, where her grandmother put her on a
plane to London. The Somali ambassador’s wife was an aunt who took her in as a
cleaner. When the ambassador left, she got a job in a burger bar. Terence
Donovan, the photographer, spotted her. “We’re always looking for new faces,” he
says in the film, handing her his card.
A modelling agent was appalled by the scars on her feet but this did not stop
her being on the cover of the Pirelli calendar in 1987, helping her to become
one of the most famous black models of the 1990s.
Aid ‘fraud’
A United Nations agency blacklisted a British whistleblower after he exposed
alleged corruption in its Somalian aid programme, according to a UN ethics
committee report, writes Sara Hashash.
Ismail Ahmed, who worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in 2005-7, said it had hounded him after he uncovered fraud in a programme
backed by British aid money to combat terrorism and money-laundering. He was
later told his contract would not be renewed.
The UNDP investigated but concluded that no current staff member was involved
in any corrupt activities.
The UN ethics report confirmed that an official had warned a potential
employer not to hire Ahmed because of his “silly” accusations. Ahmed has
received compensation.
