'I used to cry inside' – FGM survivor Kurima opens up about painful sex after her clitoris was cut

Kurima, a Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) survivor from Dorimon in the Upper West Region, has opened up about the pain she experienced during sex after part of her clitoris was removed as a baby.

She said sex became something she feared rather than enjoyed.

According to Kurima, she would sometimes cry internally whenever she knew intimacy was about to happen.

“I used to cry inside,” she said in an interview with Serwaa Amihere. She explained that she associated sex with pain because of the effects she experienced after FGM.

Kurima said the pain felt like pressure being applied to a scar.

“It never heals. Outside it heals, but inside it never heals,” she recalled.

She said she delayed having sex until she was 20 because she wanted to understand what she would experience.

But when she eventually became sexually active, the experience was not what she had expected.

Kurima said she struggled to feel sexual pleasure and often felt pain instead.

She also said the experience affected how she viewed herself.

“I lost my smile,” she said. Kurima explained that she knew she was beautiful but began feeling that something was missing.

She also became worried about whether she would be able to satisfy a partner or have children normally.

Her experience eventually led to a repair procedure in 2014.

She said the procedure made a major difference.

After the repair, Kurima said she experienced an orgasm for the first time.

She married in 2015.
However, she said the repair did not completely restore the sensation she had lost.

She explained that it took longer for her husband to bring her to orgasm.

Kurima also spoke about childbirth. She said she had all her children through Caesarean section after being advised that it was the safer option in her case.

Her experience with sex remains one of the reasons she speaks publicly against FGM.

She said she does not want other girls to grow up and discover that a decision made about their bodies as babies has affected their adult lives.

For Kurima, the issue is bigger than her own experience. “My silence will let more women lose their marriages,” she said.

“But if I speak, I’ll save a girl. If I speak, who knows? It might end this barbaric act.”

-mynewsgh