Meaning of Life - prepare to be enlightened

Yesterday I was contemplating the meaning of life and why I'm here on this planet.

You might ask me - Rachel, why would you spend a perfectly lovely Sunday afternoon contemplating such a useless subject? After all, not only will the answer to this question only lead to more questions, but I really ought to have been studying Chinese.

The answer to why I was thinking about it is because I had just finished reading the second book of Waris Dirie's, the Somalian female model who speaks out against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Apparently in Somalia, the worst form of FGM is practiced, called infibulation. This is when a gypsy bush midwife will take whatever instrument she has on hand (the woman who "operated on" Waris Dirie used a broken razor blade) and cut away most of the labia and clitoris and then sew up the remaining flesh so that the girl can be proven to be a virgin on her wedding night. The hole left for urination and menstruation is usually too small, and Waris Dirie said that it took her ten minutes to pee and 10 days for her period. Some 6,000 girls a DAY are at risk of dying from this procedure in Africa, but also in the West, where immigrants have brought this practice with them. She was able to have an operation to get most of the effects reversed and can function mostly normally. Most women in Africa, of course, must live their entire lives with this condition, often being cut open (!!!) to give birth, then re-sewn back up (!!!!!) afterwards so that their husbands still have a nice, tight wife. The reason women submit to having their daughters mutilated in such a way? Girls who are intact are considered over-sexed and unclean, and are seen as unfit marriage partners. Thus, to get married, one must be mutilated.

Waris Dirie has made it her life's work to combat FGM. The current hope is that it would be possible to convince people to switch to a less invasive form of female circumcision, or make it entirely symbolic. However, this practice has been going on in Africa far longer than anyone knows, for up to four thousand years according to some estimates. Something like this can't be changed overnight, but people can try. Eritrea recently banned FGM - this month, actually. So maybe there is hope.
So, what was I doing yesterday? Well, precisely nothing. I had a day off from school and I was enjoying it by reading a book. Then I started thinking about why I am alive, and what purpose do I, or should I, have - and then got depressed because I couldn't really think of one.

So I went for a bike ride and felt better. The big questions of the world can be answered another day and be getting depressed about having no answer is about as stupid as that bee who kept flying into the window all day yesterday only to be squashed when he interrupted my host father's dinner.