“Luckiest girl alive.”

I’m Hoda Ali and I am the luckiest girl alive.

1978

I was born in Somaliland to a loving family, the first born of my father Mohammed Ali Abtidon and the second daughter of my mother Anab Ali Abdi. I was one of the seven siblings in a home where we were all treated with respect and given the space to do whatever we wanted to do.

1985

With my sisters, we would go to the beach every Friday, enjoy climbing the mango trees to pick the ripest fruits ever and I would feed my monkey the freshest bananas. Life was beautiful until it wasn’t. This was the year my sister and I both got cut. We thought it was a day of celebration, felt just like Christmas until the cutting happened. We found out soon enough that was far from the truth, which shaped the rest of our lives.

1988

I was eight when the Somali war broke out in Hargeisa. It was the week after Eid and my younger sister and I were given the most beautiful dresses to wear. I still remember mine: a white dress with red flowers and a bow around the waist. I felt like a princess. My oldest sister shook me out of my sleep. ‘Get up. We have to go.’ Even though I was little I knew things weren’t right. There had been gunshots in my dreams, but no one explains war to a child. ‘Can’t we wait for mum and dad?’ ‘No, they’ll meet us later.’ ‘Can I pack my dress?’ My sister was already dragging me out the door. ‘There’s no need. We’ll come back for it. Now we have to go.’

“Until today, I have never been back to my home to get my Eid dress.”

1988

We walked through the Naasa Hablood mountains for nearly two weeks to get to our new home, Mogadishu. I thought this was our new home. I went to school again and made new friends. Life returned to normal - a few years later in 1991, aged thirteen, I had to face yet another civil war.

1992

I got sick and ended up being hospitalised due to complications of FGM. I could not follow my family when they escaped to find safety for a second time. I was bedbound in a hospital in Mogadishu with a tube attached to my privates to drain the period blood that had been accumulating in my stomach because of FGM. My parents had thought FGM would keep me safe. Instead, it trapped me in a half-destroyed hospital in the midst of a war. When the hospital itself was bombed my father managed to arrange for our escape to Djibouti. I joined my family and we stayed there for a few more years.

1994

Then my health got progressively worse and no hospital could help me, so I was given a visa to travel to Italy to receive medical help. You see, I never wanted to leave my beautiful country. I wanted to stay. I wanted to go back for my dress. My father and I were thousands of miles away from my mother and siblings. He wanted to cheer me up and took me out of the hospital to show me Duomo di Milano, then he explained to me that we now had to be refugees. I did not want to be a refugee. I wanted to go home but there was no home now.

“Later that year, it was time to say goodbye to my father who had to go back for my mother and siblings. I ended up in refugee camps in Holland without speaking a word of Dutch or English. I had no idea what the future held for me.”

1997

I arrived in the UK in Sheffield and started to rebuild my life as it was clear to me that I was all alone with no home to go back to. I made the UK my new home, learnt English and started my education to become a nurse. I wanted to be a nurse to be just like the nurses who looked after me back in Mogadishu.

2001

I moved to London and within 24 hours, I met the love of my life and got a job that I would work at for the next eight years. In 2006, I got married and just when I believed everything was going to be okay, FGM’s complications caught up with me again. I spent the next few years getting treatment and IVF to have a baby and when I got pregnant, a few weeks later right before my first scan appointment, I lost my baby.

“I decided to become an activist to save the future generations from the pain I was enduring when I got told I couldn’t have a baby because of FGM.”

2013

I met Mabel Evans, my dear friend, my sister and inspiration and Co-founded The Vavengers with her.
We launched Europe’s first-ever anti-FGM billboard campaign and connected people through art, poetry and music. The Vavengers then continued on and became an important organisation committed to ending FGM and all other forms of Gender-Based Violence.

2021

I am now on the board of The Vavengers working alongside an incredible team as a Trustee, while also continuing my work as an educator, activist and public speaker. I am proud to be a woman and proud of where I am today, my work continues.

2023

I hosted the End FGM Conference with Ealing Council Health Improvement Team funded by John Lyon’s charity.

This aimed at bringing a diverse audience of policy makers, NGO’S etc. to engage in a much needed conversation about how far we have come and what needs to be done.