During vacation I enhanced my first ideas of a topic.

After having ordered the book “Desert Flower” written by Waris Dirie and read it once more, I definitely decided to choose this book as the base of my Facharbeit.

I underlined important and necessary information and got an idea of the life in Somalia and especially of the situation of women and some facts about female genital mutilation.

Furthermore, I ordered three books at the Landschaftsbibliothek and read one of them keenly. Then I put all the necessary information in keywords.

I also found a final report of a conference in Bern about FGM in the Internet and I copied some graphics.

So my topic will be “Desert Flower- Female genital mutilation in Somalia” and I’m about to start on 08. April. Unti then I want to establish a structure to work more precisely with the additional books. 

 

Week 1 (April 08- 15)

At first I established the temporary stucture:

Female genital mutilation in Somalia based on Waris Dirie’s “Desert Flower: Stucture 

 

1)      Introduction

 

2)      Novel “Desert Flower” by Waris Dirie

2.1       Summary

2.2       Biography of Waris Dirie

            2.2 a)   Dirie as a victim of female genital mutilation

 

3)      Female genital mutilation in Somalia

3.1              Forms of mutilation

3.2              Origin

3.3              Reasons

3.4              Consequences

3.4 a)   physical

3.4 b)   mental

3.5              Fight against female genital mutilation

 

4)      Conclusion

 

5)      Endnotes

 

6)      Bibliography

 

I worked out the information of a book from TERRE DES FEMMES and also started to reread the book “Desert Flower”. From Mr. Donath I got the hint to read up on Rüdiger Nehberg and the implementation of a fatwa against FGM. So I found several important information. I also found some facts about Dirie’s disappearance in March and Somalia in general.

At the moment I’m still collecting information and I hope to finish it this week by reading the remaining book and end my keywords to start writing a text in the third week.

 

Week 2 (April 15- 22)

Another week is over and so it is time for a new intermediate result.

I managed to read the remaining book and enlarge the keywords but I could not finish collecting information from my main book “Desert Flower”. It was a hard week with too many things to do beside the Facharbeit like written test and so I guess this week will be better. At the moment I’m sort through my keywords because some of them I wrote down twice and I try to sort out the information which are useless at second glance. Moreover, I will end Desert Flower and so I hope to start writing my text at weekend.

 

Week 3 (April 23- 29)

This week I assigned my information to the subsections of my structure which makes writing easier because of the sorting. I also added some new points to my structure which I will insert at the end.

I also found some new interesting facts concerning Waris Dirie and a poem I will use to explain the women’s feelings.

Most of the time I spent to work with my main book “Desert Flower” and so I wrote down all the information consistent with the summary and the biography. So I finally began to write the text and I finished the first subitem- the summary.

My plan for the next week is to continue with my text and I hope to finish the first part “Novel “Desert Flower” by Waris Dirie”.

The updated structure:

Female genital mutilation in Somalia based on Waris Dirie’s “Desert Flower: Stucture

1)      Introduction

 

2)      Novel “Desert Flower” by Waris Dirie

2.1       Summary

2.2       Biography of Waris Dirie

            2.2 a)   Dirie as a victim of female genital mutilation

            2.2 b)   Dirie- a victim of her own success?

 

3)      Female genital mutilation in Somalia

3.1              Forms of mutilation

3.2              Origin

3.3              Reasons

3.4              Consequences

3.4 a)   physical

3.4 b)   mental

3.5              Fight against female genital mutilation

3.5 a)   Ways to prohibition

3.5 b)   The fatwa lined up by Rüdiger Nehberg

  

4)      Conclusion

 

 

 

5)      Reflection

 

 

7)      Bibliography

 

8)   Annex

 

Week 4 (April 30- May 6)

This week I finished the part “Novel “Desert Flower” by Waris Dirie”. The first two subitems (Summary and Dirie as a victim of female genital muilation) were easy to write because I read the book a few times and I often thought about how to present these parts. More difficult was the last subitem (Dirie- a victim of her own success?) because of the large number of newspaper articles and even more because of the various versions about the happenings at those days Dirie was missing. But it was also interesting because I found out some facts I did not know before.

I also started to prepare the next point “Female genital mutilation” by sorting my keywords and planed the structure of my text and possible additional subpoints. So I hope to write the large part of the next point during the next week.

 

Week 5 (May 7- May 13)

A labour-intensive week is over and so I will present what I’ve done so far.

I finished the points “Forms of mutilation” and “Origin” without any problems. The worst part of my Facharbeit so far definitely was the point “Reasons” because I also had to aplify the religious reasons. To understand these facts I had to read in some parts of Islamic scripts especially the Hadith (the oral traditions of Prophet Mohammeds life and his deeds). This was a very exacting part and I am glad that I have finished the research.

So at the moment I formulate my results and I think that I finish this point within the next few days.

I hope that I will finish the whole point the next week but also the subitem “Ways to prohibition” will need some more reseach. So there is still enough to do to say nothing of correction.

Week 6 (May 14- May 20)

This week was very efficient because I finished the main part so that the last week is left for point 1) Introduction and the points 4) Conclusion and 5) Reflection and of course also the correction. So I experienced what my schoolmates already depicted: Writing process develops from writing.

In course of my work I changed the subitem Consequences because it was hard to divide the consequences into the points physical and mental. I always ended in the same order: consequences during circumcision, during healing process and long-term consequences. So I changed 3.4 like that:

3.4              Consequences

3.4 a)   during circumcision

3.4 b)   during healing process

3.4 c)   Long-term consequences

I also created my cover sheet and typed out “page 0″, the Schlusserklärung, started with the bibliography and buyed a folder.

So in the following (and last) week I will finish the Facharbeit by writing the Introduction, Conclusion and Reflection, correcting the text and arranging the Annex.

Week 7 (May 21- May 27)

Finally handed

The last week was quite relaxing because I stayed on my schedule which made it possible to have some days left just to correct and improve the text. Writing the introduction, conclusion and reflection was no problem because I already thought about the content before and also because it included my own point of view.

At last I arranged my annex which also was no problem because I quoted some of the numbers and facts in my text so that I just had to scan the tables, pictures and maps.

The worst thing during the last week was a problem with my printer (as it always is) because it creased my cover picture. But I managed to solve it by using an old printer so that I handed my Facharbeit on schedule.

Reflecting the working process, I have to say that it was a stressful but interesting time. The fact that we chose our topics by ourselves made the work easier because it was a topic of our own interest. All in all I am satisfied with my work but also relieved because it was hard to relax and enjoy the free time when always bearing in mind that the Facharbeit is still unfinished.