She gives as many gifts as she can, but cannot satisfy everybody! She was asked to take children back to the USA with her, among other requests. Waris shows how important family, the clan, is in Somalian culture. Waris spends quality time with her family, seeing siblings that she hasn’t seen in many years as well as extended family. She finds her parents aged, her mother is strong but her father has problems with his eyes, and she sees that he is taken to a hospital and given proper treatment – or the best that she could get him.

Nonetheless, despite advice from travel officials not to go, she sets off with her brother and arrives in Somalia, where she is shocked at the way women are treated and viewed. Somalia was then a war torn country with real stable government. Waris relates how her sister died shortly after having this ‘procedure’ done to her.Īfter living in the USA for some years and having a child, Waris returns home to Somalia with the desire to see her parents. Waris struggles with loyalty to her family and culture, against loyalty to herself as a woman, loyalty to her body and the truth of what her culture did to her and countless other young girls. She speaks about it at large meetings, and gives interviews. In the USA, she finds the strength to speak out against Female Genital Mutilation.

Waris is promised to a much older man, and in protest she runs away and finds her way to the US where she is discovered and becomes an international model. She describes the dry conditions of the desert, and the nomadic way of life. The message is clear: ‘Be warned – your normal is abnormal here.’ Waris describes her early days as her mother’s helper and as the watcher of goats and camels. Summary of Events: Waris starts off by telling us that in her country devils are white, as a way of showing us from the start that we are being introduced to a perspective totally different from the Western one we are used to. Who: Waris, her family – her mother, her father and numerous siblings and her son. She is unsure of her exact birth date but I guess late 1970’s. What/Where/When: This is an autobiographical account by Waris Dirie, a famous international model from Somalia.

Desert dawn waris dirie