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SHE was 13 when she fled her home in the Somali desert and an arranged marriage with a man five times her age.
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.
