Photo Essay: Eritrea (continued)

Other things remain the same, although the government has vowed to change them. Today, for instance, 85 percent of Eritrea's women are illiterate, and 85 percent of girls, both Christian and Muslim, are still being genitally mutilated.

This is a familiar sight. In every Eritrean home I've entered, I've found at least one, sometimes more, of these reminders of the human cost of conflict.

"The clitoris is a dirty thing,'' says Tsega Habtu, a midwife in the village of Hagaz, who delivers babies and performs circumcisions on Eritrean girls. She thinks she's about 45 years old, and she's been delivering babies since she had her first child at 15.

Medicine Woman: Tsega Habtu has been a midwife for 30 years. She also performs circumcisions on Eritrean girls.

As Tsega talks, she gestures explicitly, showing how she whisks away the offensive piece of flesh, how the young girls' blood-stained legs are bound after the procedure. My legs are crossed, tightly, as I listen.

I wince more than once. Ruth, my translator, is uncomfortable with my questions.

``I can't ask that,'' she says. Sex is a taboo subject, but I ask direct questions, and to Ruth's surprise, Tsega answers directly.

Midwives admit this traditional practice is unhealthy, remembering their own painful childhood experiences. Menstruating is painful. Sex is painful. The delivery of the first child is particularly brutal.

But the midwives say the mothers want their daughters circumcised. The mothers say they do it for the men, so they'll value their daughters. The men say they don't like it. I say they should all get around a table and talk to each other. Ruth translates.

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