Cameroon: Protect Your Daughters, Iron Their Breasts

"Please God, make my breasts disappear." Joyce Forghab used to pray the same line every night during the month she was suffering from breast ironing. The shocking practice, carried out by a quarter of mothers in Cameroon, is meant to reverse female sexual development.

Joyce was only eight years old when the drama began. Her mother would take a flat stone and heat it over the fire for several minutes until it was burning. "She protected her hands because she knew it was really hot.

 She took it, pressed it against my breasts and massaged them really well," recalls Joyce, now 25 years old. "It was very, very painful... I had to run away from the house. It was horrible."

Joyce's experience is no exception in Cameroon. An estimated one in four girls suffers from the practice in their childhood. Breast ironing is a traditional ritual in which, by using heated and flat objects, a girl's growing breasts are pressed in order to suppress and reverse their development. The act is usually performed by a girl's mother or aunt.
To iron breasts they mostly use a wooden pestle or a stone, other tools employed include coconut shells, grinding stones, ladles, spatulas and hammers - all carefully heated over burning coals.
"Breast ironing has existed as long as Cameroon has existed," says Sinou Tchana, Cameroonian gynaecologist and vice-president of the Cameroonian Association of Female Doctors. In the early nineties, when her association started touring the ten regions of Cameroon to find out what practices could have been affecting female sexuality, they were shocked by the prevalence of breast ironing in most parts of the country.
"We explained that it was not good, but the mothers and the aunts told us that it was normal for them that when the breasts are developing they have to iron them to avoid their growing. They did not see the dangers of what they were doing," explains Dr. Tchana.
Renata, a women's association in Cameroon, reported in 2006 that the breast ironing rate was most prevalent in two Cameroonian areas: the Coast at 53 percent and the North-West, at 31 percent. Renata's study also showed that it was more common in the Christian and Animist South (30-50 percent) than in the Muslim North (10 percent).
Although breast ironing is most widely practised in Cameroon, it also occurs in Guinea-Bissau, West and Central Africa, including Chad, Togo, Benin and Guinea-Conakry.
Doctor Tchana often comes across both victims and perpetrators of the ritual in her clinic. Often, mothers do not realise what they are doing to their daughters. She recalls one woman coming in to the practice about a year ago, begging for forgiveness:
"Forgive me doctor, I was not measuring the pain, but when I burnt myself I realised the type of suffering my little girl had to endure," she cried. The woman was ironing her daughter's breast when she burnt her hand. That is why she had come to see the doctor.
"When they take the stone from the fire they start ironing one breast first. In the case of that girl, one was really, really destroyed; the other one was not as bad. But the result is the same. Now one breast is smaller than the other one," said Dr. Tchana.
Breast ironing leads to two main opposite effects on women's breasts. On one hand, it can reduce its size considerably, leaving girls flat-chested. Or, it provokes rather the opposite reaction: by destroying the breast tissue, the breast just becomes a bag of fat without any muscle or shape. This is what happened to Joyce.
"My breasts have collapsed because of breast ironing. It has nothing to do with giving birth, because before having my child I already had the problem. I cannot be without my bra; I need it all the time, even when I am sleeping or feeding my baby," she said.

Dr. Tchana clarifies: "Really small breasts usually are due to the fact that families used the 'right0 technique. This means the stones were not too warm and the breasts are ironed equally all over. On the contrary, when bad techniques are used - very hot stones and quick ironing - oversized breasts and burning are major consequences. In all cases, however, you have problems of reconstruction and it is very expensive because nobody now would pay for it."

Apart from being painful and psychologically traumatic, breast ironing exposes girls to multiple health problems. According to many medical reports, it can lead to abscesses, itching, inability to breastfeed the babies, infection, deformity or disappearance of the breasts, cysts, tissue damage and even breast cancer.
"I had one girl who died of breast cancer aged 24. You can have breast cancer in the cases in which the ironing is so intense that it destructs all the breast tissue," explains Dr. Tchana.
So why?
With all the medical evidence present, why do a quarter of Cameroonian girls still have to experience the torturous practice? Ze Jeanne, a 57-year-old Cameroonian woman and mother of eight, clarifies her reasons. "When the breasts of a young girl start growing, any man can come to her and try to have sex with her so, in order to help the girls continue school, we have to do breast ironing," she says.
She sits calmly in an armchair in her house, twenty minutes from Yaoundé city centre. Her daughter Clarisse is lying in a sofa next to her. Ze explains that she ironed the breasts of all her daughters when they started developing too early.
"In her case," says Ze pointing to Clarisse, "her breasts started growing at nine, so I was obliged to do breast ironing to her in order to stop it. I did not do it to destroy the breast, but to help the girl," she insists.

Breast ironing is justified by Cameroonian women for many reasons. Apart from being historically rooted in their culture, it is used to avoid sexual contact between young girls and boys. By preventing girls' bodies from the sign of emerging sexuality, mothers try to make sure that their girls remain virginal and pure and prevent them from becoming visibly fertile women - and potential mothers.

Mothers are not completely unjustified in their fears. Early sexual encounters can lead these young teenagers to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, possible rapes or the transmission of sexual diseases. Burning girls' emerging breasts to many mothers seems a far better option than the risk of the above. It is a measure born out of love and care for their daughters, they argue. But does it work?
Most of the young victims of breast ironing say the practice is extremely painful. And they insist that still does not prevent sexual attention.
"It is not the best way of avoiding pregnancies because after all, somebody like me can still get pregnant. I had a child before getting married, so in my case it did not help at all. For me it (sexual awareness) is all in the head. Once you get older, you think twice about the risks you are taking," says Joyce.