KILGORIS, Kenya (dpa) – Seventy-six teenage girls are singing songs in the Maasai language, wearing necklaces and headdresses made of brightly coloured beads, and dancing energetically.
The event – held in the main town of Trans Mara district, 220 kilometres west of Nairobi – has all the markings of a special ceremony.For virtually every girl in this region, the ceremony that marks the rite of passage to womanhood involves the excruciatingly painful act its proponents call female circumcision – cutting off the clitoris. Campaigners prefer to call it female genital mutilation, or FGM.At the ceremony in Kilgoris, the 76 girls are not just celebrating, but also making a statement. All wear bright yellow T- shirts declaring: “Trans Mara says No to Female Circumcision.”The event is an alternative rite of passage, fast becoming the weapon of choice in the campaign to eradicate FGM, which is widespread among pastoralist tribes throughout much of East Africa and the Horn.In the alternative rite, girls go through all the same events that surround the circumcision ceremony, without the cutting. In Trans Mara, the girls are declaring in front of gathered dignitaries and hundreds of local people that they will not be circumcised.Jane Sapato Kaputei, 17, says she is choosing not to undergo FGM because of its dangers. “If a person is circumsised, it is difficult even to urinate, it is difficult in childbirth, and it can even lead to death as a person can bleed so hard.”Yet by refusing to undergo FGM, Kaputei and the other girls are facing different risks. She says some people have told her she will be forcibly circumcised and says others have been kicked out of their homes.However her father, John Kimokotio, supports her decision, and calls the practice outdated. “This is her own life and I cannot force her to follow what she doesn’t want,” he says.German Technical Co-operation (GTZ) sponsored the alternative rite of passage and the awareness campaign that led up to it. The girls were educated about the harmful effects of FGM and “community mobilizers” – local people chosen for their positions of respect and authority – worked to gather support among the adults.The organizers decided that to have any chance of success, they needed to persuade the girls’ fathers that circumcision was wrong, says project co-ordinator Jane Kamau.“We realized that the men were actually the decision-makers,” Kamau says. “They are the ones that gain more (from the circumcision ceremony). The gifts that are given in the form of cows, they are the ones who keep them.“They spend so much money to entertain people, it’s them who earn the prestige while the girl has nothing that goes to her.”The persuading proved rather difficult. Some of GTZ’s community mobilizers were thrown out of homes during recent weeks and others were physically threatened.Cabinet minister Julius Sunkuli, the local member of parliament, alludes to the controversy over the issue in his speech to the girls at the alternative rite of passage.“What we have come to do here today is really a very sensitive thing politically,” says Sunkuli “It is really very sensitive for me, knowing that I will be looking for votes next year, to stand up and say that I support the banning of female genital mutilation.”He says FGM “is a practice that is going away, whether we like it or not. It is our responsibility to ensure that it goes away quickly.”The way to make it go away is not a legislative ban – which would only drive the practice underground – but to do more to educate girls, according to Sunkuli.Despite the campaigners efforts, FGM remains deeply entrenched in the society. Most ethnic Maasai believe a girl does not become a women and cannot get married until she is circumcised. According to a GTZ survey, more than 99 per cent of mothers in Trans Mara district went through FGM and those who didn’t are ostracized.Even among young girls, nearly half of those surveyed say they are in favour of the process.“Slowly by slowly they are refusing, but still there are a big number that are being circumcised,” says Daniel Kipsanga, head teacher at Oltanki primary school.Strong opposition to the anti-FGM campaign here has come from the women who do the circumcisions. However, one actually joined the campaign, while another has told the project organizers she will not perform the rite during the upcoming circumcision season in December.That’s when the strength of the alternative rite of passage will be truly tested. The organizers say it will be important to see how many of the 76 girls manage to stick to their resolution and withstand the community pressure to undergo FGM.Says Kamau: “We’ll see what happens when December comes.”
