Uganda: Over 200 Sabiny Girls to be Circumcised

November 9, 2010
AllAfrica.com
Frederick Womakuyu

Kampala — Elders in Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts are preparing to circumcise over 200 girls next month despite a new law banning the practice.

They swear that the whole tribe would rather go to prison than abolish a custom they inherited from their ancestors.



The practice, commonly referred to as female circumcision, is mostly practiced among the Sabiny, who occupy Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts on the northern slopes of Mt Elgon. The United Nations categorises it as female genital mutilation (FGM) because it damages a woman's sexuality and leads to various complications. FGM refers to the removal of the external female genitalia.


Accordingly, last December parliament passed a law banning female circumcision. President Yoweri Museveni signed it into law on March 17, 2010 and it took effect on April 9, 2010.



The law argues that FGM infringes on the rights of the woman and also leads to health hazards, including excessive bleeding, death, birth complications and exposure to illnesses. The law criminalises the practice, calls for prosecution of offenders and protection of victims. Anyone caught doing it faces 10 years in jail or life imprisonment if the victim dies.


But the Sabiny are unfazed by this law. The vice-chairman of Bukwo district, John Chelangat, says over 200 girls are being prepared for the practice beginning on December 1 and neither he nor other political leaders are able to stop it. The men like it because circumcised women are less interested in sex and are, therefore, less likely to have extramarital affairs. The girls do not want to be considered outcasts, so they go for the knife.


"This is a very sensitive period and no politician will talk about abolishing FGM because we shall lose votes. Myself, I will not talk about FGM because I know this will land me into the political dustbin," says Chelangat.


Consequently, as the December 1, 2010 circumcision nears, preparations to grace the ritual are in high gear in Sebei region.




In Bukwo district, the residents had a bumper harvest of maize, sorghum and millet that is being used for making local brew (Malwa) to entertain the revelers and also aid in performing sacred rituals, only known to the Sabiny people.


Kokop Chebet, 70, a mentor from Matibeyi village in Suam sub-county-Bukwo, says she has received applications from over 20 girls wishing to be prepared for the ritual.


"They came to me in January and I have been training them on how to go through the ritual. They told me they want to become women like others because they are tired of being scolded by the community that still calls them girls because they are not cut," she adds.




Alice Kokop, 65, another mentor from Suam says she has also received about 15 applications from girls in Kabei sub-county wishing to be cut.


Other girls are to come from Chesower and Bukwo Town Council sub-counties. "I have already taken them through a series of trainings and they are about to be ready. We shall cut the first group in the first week of December," Kokop explains.


Asked about the law prohibiting FGM, the two said a law cannot stop the cultural rite of the Sabiny people unless the community agrees with it.


Twenty-year-old Ana Chebet is a resident of Matibeyi village in Suam. Married with three children, Chebet has always been scolded by the community for not undergoing circumcision that passes her from childhood to adulthood.


"I cannot milk a cow or climb into the family granary. Whenever I go to the well, other women throw scorn at me because I am not cut," adds Chebet, who will be one of the candidates this December.


She says mentors trained her how to dance when preparing for the ritual, the kind of food to eat, including posho, beans, honey and fermented milk to replace lost energy and blood.




Alice Chemutai, 17, another resident of Matibeyi, was convinced by her aunt to undergo female circumcision. But because she is educated she refused and her father supported her.


She recites an endless list of young girls who have dropped out of school to get married after the ritual and those who have had birth complications, bleeding and infections after.


"I will never get circumcised because this will not only infringe on my rights of womanhood but will also expose me to long-term health hazards. I am happy my father and mother support me against other relatives," adds Chemutai, a Senior Three student at Amananga High School in Suam.


According to the law, a person commits aggravated FGM in situations where death occurs or where the victim is disabled or is infected with HIV/AIDS.


A person also commits aggravated FGM where the offender is a parent, guardian or person having control over the victim or where the act is done by a health worker.


The law punishes a person who commits aggravated FGM with life imprisonment.


A person who carries out FGM shall be imprisoned for a period not exceeding 10 years. People who participate or aid FGM shall be jailed.


The Sabiny people claim they do not fear the law and they are ready to die for FGM. "This law was not initiated or brought by the people of Sebei. It was brought by the people who do not understand why we carry out circumcision," adds Alice Kokop.


According to Sabiny customs and traditions, female circumcision has been around for over 2,000 years and it is carried out to convert a female from childhood to adulthood. Females who are not circumcised are not called women and they are not supposed to carry out certain home activities like milking a cow, climbing into a family granary and talking with the elders.

Uganda Continues to Battle Female Circumcision

November 9, 2010
The Press Institute
Beatrice Lamwaka


KAPCHORWA DISTRICT, UGANDA –Judith Nakitari, Monica Chelimo and Betty Cheboi Akiki were the best of friends as teenagers. Growing up in the rural Kapchorwa district of Uganda, nearly 200 miles from the capital Kampala, the girls did everything together.


When they were 16, all three were forced by relatives and village elders to undergo female circumcision, or female genital mutilation as it more widely known now.


“At that time, there was no one to save you,” Nakitari says. “You had to get circumcised. Fathers would wait for their daughters with spears so that their daughters didn’t embarrass them, in case they cried or ran away.”


Nakitari, the only one of her childhood friends alive today, says they were all scared of the knife but they knew that it was a rite of passage and there was nothing they could do to avoid it. The night of their circumcision, the girls performed the rituals. They danced and sang. They promised not to reveal the secrets of the circumcision, namely the pain. Nakitari says their relatives watched as a crude knife was used to remove each clitoris and outer genitalia.


After the procedure, the girls were made to walk several miles to the location where they were supposed to be nursed by traditional healers. But the healers never came to care for the girls or monitor their wounds. To make matters worse, the girls parents did not adequately pay for the circumcision Nakitari says the circumciser, a local medicine woman, took a piece of each clitoris that she had cut, promising to bewitch the girls if their families never paid her for her service.


Today, more than 30 years later, Nakitari says they were cursed. All three women were plagued by physical and psychological complications throughout their lives.


Female genital mutilation, FGM, is defined as a nonmedical procedure that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. According to the World Health Organization, WHO, an estimated 130 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. Another 92 million African girls, ages 0 to 10, have already undergone the cut.


Despite the increased awareness and international attention surrounding FGM, an estimated 3 million girls remain at risk of mutilation each year in Africa alone. Several countries, including Uganda, have enacted new laws to outlaw the common cultural practice. But FGM is still practiced in 28 countries in Africa, and a handful of countries in Asia and the Middle East. In Uganda, the Kapchorwa district, where Nakitari is from, is one of the districts where FGM is still practiced despite the new law signed by President Yoweri Museveni earlier this year that prohibits and criminalizes FGM. The law makes provisions to punish the offenders and protect the victims. But as circumcision season approaches, advocates are wondering just how effective the litigation will be in the country’s most rural areas.


The Physical and the Psychological: Post-Circumcision Consequences



Nakitari says her wound eventually healed, but she has had life long numbness in the area. Just one year after her circumcision, she was married and she gave birth to her first son. “I have never enjoyed sex. But I had to give to my husband. It is my responsibility,” she says.


As the months and years passed, all three women began to suffer physical symptoms including abdominal pain, numbness and a host of other symptoms not typically associated with female genital mutilation, like joint pain and partial paralysis. Natkitari says she and her two friends had pain when they walked long distances and did heavy work. Strangely, by 1987, eleven years after circumcision, all three women used walking sticks or crutches to just get around their homes.


Akiki went to Kenyatta Hospital in Kampala where her symptoms could not be diagnosed, but she was given painkillers. Nakitari went to Nsambya Hospital but doctors were also unable to identify her condition. By the early 1990s, all three women were completely crippled. And by 2006, Akiki and Chelimo were dead.


“I sought help from different witchdoctors,” admits Nakitari. “Each time, I was told that I had been bewitched.” While new research suggests that long lasting abdominal pain may be a complication related to female genital mutilation, no current data lists paralysis as a result of female genital mutilation. But for Nakitari, the paralysis and untimely deaths of her two friends have had one positive consequence -- the young girls in Kwomo village now protest the cultural rite of circumcision. “In Kwomo village, no girl will get circumcised, especially if she sees the way I suffer every day,” she says of the now common rumor that she was cursed after her circumcision.


New Era of Advocates Lobby for Change in Hardest Hit Areas


Amina Buraimu, 62, says she has been circumcising young girls in Uganda for decades. She claims to have circumcised more than three million women here. Buraimu disagrees with the now common human rights definition of the procedure – she says it does not cause long-term numbness or pain and it is not a factor in sexually transmitted infections. Though data from the WHO and the United Nations suggests that HIV transmission among FGM victims is high thanks to multiple operations performed with the same knife.


“All the people I have circumcised are well,” she says. “They are married with children and they don’t suffer from STDs.” Buraimu’s claims, of course, cannot be verified, but she highlights an important fact. While the international community and the national government here have become outspoken in favor of banning the practice, it still holds significance on the ground, especially in rural regions and among village elders.


Buraimu says she started “to cut girls” 1978 with guidance from the circumcision spirit. “I heard voices of three women within. They were saying they would kill me if I didn’t circumcise girls. I refused and hid in the forest for days, but the voices continued to haunt me,” she says.


Buraimu says the ritual is important and forces young girls to remain virgins until they are married. “These days, girls have sex before marriage. They insist that they want to enjoy sex with their husbands. That’s why they don’t want to be circumcised,” Buraimu says. Buraimu says she long believed circumcision was a vital cultural practice.


Not so, says Justine Chemutai, a community educator with the Reproductive, Educative and Community Health organization, REACH, that is based in Kampala. “The impact of FGM has proven to be undesirable to females and their families as well,” Chemutai says. REACH has been combating the ongoing practice of FGM since 1996. The group reaches out to clan leaders, village elders, political and religious leaders, traditional healers, and other community based organizations to educate people on the lasting physical and psychological consequences of the practice – from infertility to depression. For Cheborion, chairman of the Sabiny Elders Association, a local organization of tribal leaders who are advocating for change, says, “There is no need to fulfill this custom any more. It has no benefit to the person who has it done.”
Even Buraimu, the circumciser, who was once called Amina Atare, meaning dangerous Amina, has recently abandoned her trade after working with people from REACH for several months to learn how circumcision can be harmful.


Despite the recent successes of the REACH program, Martin Cherukut, a monitor and evaluation officer with REACH, says there are many regions where circumcisions continue unmitigated. In the Kapchorwa district, the topography offers activists and law enforcement the largest challenge. “People can hide in the plains and circumcise. By the time the authority reaches them, they have run away,” Cherukut says. He says another problem is that many circumcisers have resorted to trafficking young girls across the border into Kenya. Or, in other cases, Cherukut says circumcisers will cross the border in from Kenya and return back after they have performed a round of FGMs.


Circumcision Season Approaching


Justine Chemusto, 26, lives in the same district where Nakitari and her friends were circumcised against their will 30 years ago. Chemusto is uncircumcised and says she is proud of it. ”I walk with my head high because I know that nobody will dehumanize me,” she says.


But others may not be as lucky. According to the Sabiny, the dominant tribal group here, calendar, December is the circumcision month. While Sabiny elders and organizations say they are rigorously preaching against FGM, many wonder how many young girls will undergo the circumcision rite in the secluded, rural areas of the country this December. Cheborion of the Sabiny Elders Association says he believes that new law and its enforcement order from local police will protect the girls here. He says the association translated the entire law into KupSabiny, the local language, so that everyone could understand.


But Cherukut of REACH is not as confident. He says there is still a lot of work to do. “Unless all circumcisers are confined in a room in December, other girls will be circumcised in the plains of Mountain Elgon.”
While police say they are on the lookout for signs of the now illegal procedure, change is hard to come by. For Buraimu, who spent her life circumcising women and believing it was her duty, she says now that she has been persuaded to stop she can’t sleep. “I dream of circumcising,” she admits.

FGM Bill Due Shortly

November 5, 2010

Irish Medical Times

Mary Anne Kenny

The text of the new Criminal Justice (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill is being finalised, the Minister for Health has confirmed.

While female genital mutilation is not thought to be widely practised in Ireland, it has been estimated from the 2006 Census that more than 2,500 migrant women living here have been subjected to it, according to AkiDwA, the African and migrant women’s network. The group says that legislation would send out an important signal internationally against the practice.

“The text of the Bill is currently being finalised and Government approval will be sought shortly for the text of the Bill and its publication,” confirmed Minister Mary Harney.

We Need a More Robust Effort to Eradicate Female Genital Mutilation

November 5, 2010

The Guardian

Mary R. Mugyeni and Safina Kwekwe Tsungu 

Women suffer from horrific trauma and often die, but despite legislation several African states continue to tolerate female genital mutilation.

Iraqi women attend a three-day conference on violence towards women in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil, some 350kms from the capital Baghdad. Photograph: Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Different kinds of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) take place across Africa. There are different motives and techniques. Regardless of the intent or sanitation and health conditions, the process used or the extent of the mutilation, FGM/C is a violation which causes debilitating traumas and sometimes death. It is a harmful and abusive practice which we must eradicate.

The common trait to all variations of mutilation is how it is used to create societies in which women are inferior. The international community has measures for this. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the UN in 1979. We also have the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), signed in 1989, and the Beijing Platform for Action (PFA) which was launched in 1995. This year, the UN general assembly approved the creation of an 'Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women' – a new UN agency -UN Women. These texts, platforms and structures display the most honourable intentions, but discrimination persists.

In practice, states continue to have an unbelievable tolerance of such abuse: only 44 countries in the world, for example, have actually criminalised domestic violence. National and regional parliaments therefore have a big part to play in holding their governments to account and producing effective and rigorous legislation.

Senegal might be the success story. A law passed in January 1999 changed the penal code to make FGM a crime. The country also ratified the Maputo protocol – an African Union document pledging the end of FGM – in 2005. It is estimated that since 1997, 4,203 communities in Senegal have given up the practice, and that it could be close to eradication by 2015.

In east African countries, where most FGM-practising communities are located, there have been different outcomes and varying levels of success. In 2009, the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) passed a resolution to end violence against women, which formed the basis for new laws in Kenya and Uganda.

Kenya enacted the Anti-Trafficking of Children Act 2010, aimed at protecting children against violence, and especially girls, many of whom are trafficked across borders to undergo FGM (often during school holidays). Prior to that, Kenya lost an opportunity to legislate against FGM when the appropriate provisions were struck out of the Sexual Offences Act – on the grounds that it was tantamount to "legislating against culture".

In Uganda, the most notorious FGM-practising community are the Sabiny, who advocate it on cultural grounds. Even though FGM prevalence stands at less than 5% in the country, all Sabiny women and girls are excised. The Ugandan parliament's approach was to pass a blanket law banning all forms of female circumcision, which came into effect in March 2010.

Then comes the challenge of turning legislation into action. Broad alliances have shown some successes. In Mauritania for instance, where it is estimated that 70% of women have suffered FGM, a fatwa pronounced in January 2010 and signed by 34 Islamic scholars called for banning the practice, asserting that it is by no means a religious requirement.

The route to eradicating FGM is still long and arduous. Our experiences show that the lack of women's involvement in the political process, both formal and informal, continue to be a major bottleneck in pushing FGM to the top of states' agendas. As women parliamentarians, we know this only too well. We have had a more arduous route to the seats we hold. The lack of women candidates in the Democratic Republic of Congo's upcoming elections will give you the starkest, most ominous account of how hard it can be.

As African parliamentarians, we are also faced with an additional challenge, which is to be recognised as a key agent for change by some donors and international organisations, despite the important scrutiny function that parliaments perform. Inter-parliamentary solidarity, between African parliaments, as well as with parliamentarians from other parts of the world, holds tremendous potential in this regard.

Last week, we attended an important seminar in Brussels organised by the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa (AWEPA) on FGM and violence against women. The seminar was a gathering of 200 parliamentarians from Africa and Europe which resulted in a strong call to action, aiming to be the starting point of a concerted effort on behalf of African parliamentarians (including Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ivory Coast, South Africa, the Pan-African Parliament and EALA) to create robust legislation which addresses the threat of FGM.

As well as calling upon parliaments to give priority to FGM, we stressed the need for alliances outside of parliaments. We advocated for a community-based strategy which also works with civil society, traditional chiefs and religious leaders, youth movements, health personnel, teachers and local government.

As members of parliament and as women, we have a tremendous moral responsibility to deliver this. But the challenges are huge.

• Mary R Mugyeni is MP and second vice-president of the Pan-African Parliament

• Safina Kwekwe Tsungu is chairperson of women's forum of
East African Legislative Assembly

Belgium: Female Circumcision a Growing Threat

November 5, 2010
Flanders News


Some 8,000 women have been circumcised in Belgium or are in danger of becoming a victim of this practice.  The figure is an estimate by researchers at the Tropical Medicine Institute in Antwerp. 


The largest number of victims live in Brussels and Antwerp.

Female circumcision is a form of mutilation of the female genitalia. The practice is most prevalent in tropical Africa, especially in countries with an Islamic background.

Few reliable figures are available. Belgian research dating from 2003 came to the conclusion that 3,000 women had undergone female circumcision in this country, though the figure did not take account of women who had acquired Belgian nationality and asylum seekers.

The latest research does and also includes the daughters of women who have been circumcised born during the past twelve years. This is because they are at risk of undergoing this form of mutilation.

Researchers have identified 1,190 girls under five years of age who are at risk as well as 1,690 girls in the 15 to 20 age category who are in danger of undergoing the practice during a holiday in their mother's country of origin.

An estimated 5,000 women are believed to have actually undergone female circumcision in Belgium.

The research at the Tropical Medicine Institute was commissioned by the Belgian Health Ministry.

Sudan: Breaking a Taboo, A Message From Within

November 4, 2010

Medecins sans Frontieres 


For the communities of Port Sudan, discussions on reproductive health were often taboo. But with community members taking a leading role in health promotion, things are changing and people are starting to talk more openly.

Miriam Osman, MSF health educator, is taking a patient's information during her first antenatal visit to Tagadom Hospital. Port Sudan, Sudan, December 2009 Photo by Asia Kambal

Under blue skies reflected on the azure, salty waves of the Red Sea, A’m (uncle) Tita, a grandfather, health promoter and one of the community leaders amongst the Beja people of Port Sudan, recalls the days when he was mocked and his words were not accepted, “I was told to respect my grey hair by people because I was speaking frankly about the medical effects of female genital cutting.”

A’m Tita is part of the  team of ten health promoters - eight women and two men - working in a reproductive health unit, supported by the international, medical humanitarian organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Sudanese city of Port Sudan. MSF is providing free services for the women and communities of Tagadom and its vicinities, where the majority of the people do not have access to reproductive healthcare.

In the last three years, MSF’s health promoters have been knocking on doors five days a week, visiting people to discuss reproductive and general health issues in Beja and Arabic languages. They speak with the community about the benefits of delivering in the hospital, family planning, breastfeeding, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and vaccinations, as well as discussing the sensitive topic of female genital cutting (FGC).

In 2006 about 69% of females in Sudan and 80% of females in the Red Sea state had undergone some form of FGC (Sudan Household Health Survey. Ministry of Health: 2006, Khartoum, Sudan). In Tagadom and neighboring areas the numbers were even higher, with 98% of females undergoing some form of FGC (Safe Motherhood Survey – National report 1999, Central Bureau of Statistics, Khartoum, Sudan).

The women of Tagadom and nearby areas endure the most harmful form of FGC: type 3 orpharaonic. This involves the removal of the outer female genitals, and infibulation or the stitching of the remaining outer vaginal labia, leaving but a small hole for urine and menstrual flow to pass through. The painful procedure of FGC and infibulation is often performed on babies as young as seven-days-old, and affects a female from childhood, into puberty and adulthood, with serious consequences for motherhood.

MSF health promoters explain that female children and adults who have undergone this procedure may face fatal bleeding, and infections such as tetanus. They are likely to develop cysts, experience painful menstruations and recurrent urinary tract infections. Many women will also suffer acute pain during sexual intercourse. If they give birth, their labours are likely to be prolonged, increasing the medical risks for the newborn.

“We find abscesses and cysts even in female children. For future new-born baby girls we explain to the mothers all the possible complications of genital cutting,” said Medilyn Guevarra, MSF Gynecologist.

De-infibulation, the de-stitching of the vaginal outer lips, is performed when preparing an infibulated woman for delivery. MSF’s gynecologist does not re-infibulate, or stitch back, the mother after delivery because of the grave medical consequences.

The trauma of living with FGC is great: “My organ is not complete because my family circumcised me, but now I am better because I am not closed (infibulated),” said Muzna, one of the thousands of women that chose to deliver in MSF’s reproductive health unit.

As FGC is a deeply ingrained cultural practice, MSF health promoters, who are from the very communities they reach out to, play a unique role in transmitting medical messages on this subject. At first the female health promoters were thought of as beggars, and the team was considered indecent for speaking openly about reproductive health issues. But in the face of strong criticism they were resilient and persisted in relaying their important health messages. In time, the health promoters gained the interest of the first few people and began to form discussion groups to talk about various health issues.

“Whenever a woman comes to us and gives us her trust, we make sure we give her complete information, so she can make an informed choice about her health,” says MSF counsellor Awadia Siddig.

Now the community is talking about the benefits of delivering in the hospital, the medical consequences of genital cutting, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and family planning with the health promoters and the counselling team. Three years ago this was unthinkable.

The health promotion team also collaborates with community members, including local imams, community leaders and singers, to convey health-related messages or raise awareness about STIs and the harmful medical effects of FGC.

Most of the residents of Tagadom and the neighboring areas are from the Beja community. Before MSF opened its reproductive health unit - the only one in the area - the majority of the women delivered in their homes with the assistance of a traditional birth attendant. Now more and more women are coming to deliver in the hospital.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Health, MSF provides a range of free services in the reproductive health unit, including antenatal and postnatal care, delivery services, family planning, sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment/counselling and other counselling services. Earlier this year MSF built and furnished an operating theatre to assist women with complicated deliveries and cesarean section surgeries. Since January 2010, Tagadom Hospital’s medical teams have conducted 54 cesarean sections and helped deliver around 1500 babies.

In September 2010, the Sudanese National Committee on Traditional Practices organised training sessions for the health promotion team to increase their skills. At the end of the year, MSF will hand over the reproductive health unit to the Ministry of Health, which will continue assisting the women of Tagadom and its surroundings.

MSF has been working in Sudan since 1979, and currently has projects in Warrap, Jonglei, Upper Nile, Unity, Western and Northern Bahr El-Ghazal, Western Equatoria and Central Equatoria, the transitional area of Abyei, North and South Darfur, Red Sea and Al-Gedaref states.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent medical humanitarian non-governmental organisation, and works in more than 70 countries. MSF teams assist people in distress irrespective of their religion, race or political beliefs.

Uganda Seeks to Sensitize Public on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Bill

November 2, 2010
NGO News Africa
Hanah Kim


In April of this year, the passing of the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Bill made female genital mutilation (FGM) in Uganda a criminal offense. However, many citizens remain unaware of the Bill and continue the practice of FGM.


According to reports, 34 girls have been circumcised in Bugiri this year, said Dalton Chemasuet, a coordinator of adult reproductive health.


There are several levels of punishment codified in the Bill for offenders of the prohibition. Those convicted of performing FGM could be imprisoned for a maximum of ten years and in the case that a patient dies during an operation, the operator would face life imprisonment.


Both governmental and non-governmental organizations are working to sensitize the community and eliminate the tradition of FGM through awareness rather than punishment in areas where the influence of the Bill has not yet reached.


There are efforts by the Ugandan government to sensitize the community about the Bill. “The government will construct a Sh1.5 billion school in Iwemba sub-county next year to promote the education of the Sabiny girls,” said Chemasuet.


NGOs such as FEMRITE, an indigenous Non-Governmental Organization that encourages women to partake in Africa’s rich literary tradition, are also doing their part.


Beyond the Dance is one of several publications dedicated to raising public awareness through the personalization of women’s issues. This compilation of memoirs and poems resounds with the voices of women who have incurred the trauma of female genital mutilation. Through personal testimonies, Beyond the Dance simultaneously promotes awareness and calls for the elimination of FGM. For more information, please got to http://www.femriteug.org/

Agony for Girls as Culture of Silence Fuels Outdated 'Cut'

November 3, 2010

Daily Nation

Mark Agutu

A conspiracy of silence and traditional beliefs continue to fuel the circumcision of girls - some of them nursery school children - in Tana River County.

Here, uncircumcised girls are perceived as children, and therefore unmarriageable.

This has propelled womenfolk to the fore in ensuring their daughters undergo the rite, despite the practice being outlawed.

And the younger the initiate, the better, so goes the thinking that has seen nursery school pupils rounded up routinely during school holidays and taken to their grandmothers who preside over the ritual of “turning them into women.”

The Nation traced seven such girls to one village in the Bura Irrigation Scheme, Tana North District. They were in a larger group of girls subjected to the cut during the August school holidays.

Efforts to keep the whole thing under wraps backfired after police officers got wind of the plans and stormed their homes.

But the officers arrived too late, after the girls had been circumcised and confined in a smoky hut to heal, as the elderly women celebrated their passage into “adulthood.”

The women were arrested, while the girls, still bleeding and groaning were taken to Hola District Hospital for observation. The women were arraigned in court and charged with subjecting children to female circumcision.

Eight of them pleaded guilty to and were sentenced to serve varying durations of community service.

Two of them denied the charges and are awaiting the determination of their case.

This was just one instance that got to the ears of the authorities. In this remote, dusty region, scores of girls are circumcised routinely.

The ritual involves cutting parts of the girl’s genitalia with a sharp blade or knife.

Traditionalists believe that circumcision makes a girl’s genitals less “sensitive” and thereby making her less prone to sexual indulgences.

Time to heal

Of the seven girls, the Nation traced, two were in nursery school while the rest were below class six.

To hide the matter from the authorities, the villagers choose April, August and December school holidays for the activity and give the girls ample time to heal before they resume learning.

“When they do it during the holidays, it is difficult for teachers to know. They ensure the children have already healed by the time they return to school,” said Furaha Primary School headteacher Margaret Githire. Some of the girls learn in Mrs Githire’s school.

According to Ms Hadija Maro, the mother of one of the seven girls, all she and other women wanted was for their girls to be accepted in the society.

Ms Maro says that a grandmother who oversees the circumcision of her granddaughter(s) is guaranteed higher social recognition.

Girls who have undergone the rite taunt their uncircumcised colleagues, fuelling stigmatisation.

And men who marry uncircumcised girls are the laughing stock in the society.

“When a man marries an uncircumcised woman, his peers taunt him. The woman is also ridiculed,” says another villager, Mrs Asha Abdullahi. The 27-year-old is a mother of five.

But these are the attitudes that anti-female circumcision campaigners want to stamp out to rescue the girls from the cultural indulgence.

Ms Sadia Hussein, 21, the face of the anti-female circumcision (at times referred to as female genital mutilation) campaign in the three districts of Tana, says time has come for the society to reject the human right abuse.

The married mother of one is herself circumcised.

“I resolved after going through it all that I will never allow my daughter to experience it,” she told the Nation in Hola Town.

She was circumcised at the age of seven and the episode is as fresh in her mind as if it happened yesterday.

It was painful and agonising. “My father did not want me to go but my mother and grandmother persisted until he relented.”

Together, with five other girls, they took her to a forest early in the morning.

Pinned her down

As one woman placed her palm on her mouth to prevent her from screaming, others spread her legs and pinned her down, allowing the circumciser to carry out her work unhindered.

From her recollection, the ceremony took half an hour but it appeared to her like many hours. Waves of agony swept over her as the sharp razor blade dug into her flesh.

It took her two months to heal.

She was given herbal concoctions to hasten the healing process and prevent infection.