Kenya – Maasai Community – FGM – Female Genital Mutilation

“Cutting girls is something our people have done for hundreds
of years,” Nashiru, the senior FGM ‘surgeon’ in the Maasai community of Ol Donyo
Nyokie, told IRIN. “No one can convince us that it is wrong.”

Like all
six FGM practitioners who carry out hundreds of procedures every year in and
around the community, Nashiru sincerely believes in the virtues of
FGM.

The women believe that an uncut woman has sexual feelings for every
man she comes across, and is likely to stray from her marriage. In fact, they
see FGM as a tool to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS in their
community.

“When you cut a girl, you know she will remain pure until she
gets married, and that after marriage, she will be faithful,” Nashiru explained.
“But when you leave a girl uncut, she sleeps with any man and brings the disease
into the community.”

Asked about cleanliness during the procedure, the
women said nowadays they used a different disposable razor blade for each girl,
instead of the traditional use of one knife to cut several girls. In addition,
they now used gloves, and had replaced the cowhide base sheet with a plastic
one.

Toshi Mahmoud, cut just a month ago, is 11 years old and still has
the bright-eyed curiosity and boundless energy of a young girl. She does well in
school, is popular with her friends, and seems to have a happy, carefree
existence.

Born into the very traditional community of Ol Donyo Nyokie
in central Kenya’s Kajiado district, Toshi had no qualms about relating her own
experience, but winced as she recalled the pain she endured when the
practitioner sliced her clitoris off.

“She [the surgeon] slept in the
same bed as me the night before. My mother woke me up at six o’clock in the
morning and poured a bucket of ice-cold water over me, and then I was taken back
into the hut and cut,” she said in Kiswahili.

At just 11 years of age,
Toshi is below the traditional age of cutting, but said that often, when the
oldest girl came of age, her parents might have all her younger sisters cut to
save the cost of having several ceremonies.

She said she dreaded the
pain, but looked forward to ‘becoming a woman’ – she wanted to be cut because it
would make her more acceptable in the eyes of her peers and her
community.

“If you are not cut, no one wants to talk to you; the girls
and boys in school laugh at you because you are still a child,” she told IRIN.
“No man will want to marry or have sex with you if you are not cut.”

But
Toshi said that despite her own willingness to be cut, she did not support the
practice of FGM, and insisted that she would not permit her own children to be
circumcised.

“We are taught in our school health club that FGM is a
harmful practice, and I wish the Maasai would stop forcing girls to do it,” she
said.

Several circumcised teenage girls in Ol Donyo Nyokie told IRIN
they would never put their own children through FGM, having been educated about
the dangers of the practice. They were adamant that they would not bow to the
community’s pressure to have their daughters cut, as many of their parents
had.

Toshi and her friends, who were all circumcised in the same month,
described how their wounds were coated with a paste made from cow dung and milk
fat to stop the bleeding and accelerate healing; all maintained they had healed
perfectly, and said they had never heard of any deaths or health complications
arising from the operation.

Twelve-year old girls from a Maasai community in Kenya. The traditional rite of FGM among the Maasai is performed between the ages of 12 and 14. Credit: Justo Casal

However, the
head teacher of the Ol Donyo Nyokie Primary School, Rebbeca Pateli, told IRIN
there had been several incidents of injury and even death from FGM.

“You
hear of girls who die, but there is never an admission that it was FGM-related.
The practice is so hidden that it is hard to know how many, but they do get
sick, and some die,” she said.

Pateli, an ardent anti-FGM campaigner,
painfully narrated how she was forced to circumcise her own daughter when the
community threatened to ostracise her and her family. “I had hardened, but my
girl was under so much pressure from her peers and elderly women that she
eventually begged me to take her for the procedure,” Pateli recounted.

The young men in the community, known as ‘moran’, or warriors, strongly
believe that FGM is a useful practice that keeps women chaste. “I am married to
a woman who is cut, and will be cutting my daughter when the time comes,”
Kapande ole Saitoti, an Ol Donyo Nyokie moran, told IRIN. “You cannot claim to
be a Maasai man or woman if you are not circumcised.”

In fact, the girls
in the community reported that men were the biggest hindrance to the fight
against FGM, because they continued to reject women who were
uncut.

Change in Ol Donyo Nyokie is slow, but it is happening. More
sanitary conditions during the procedure means fewer women suffer
hygiene-related complications, and the use of a different blade for each girl
has cut down the risk of passing on infections, such as HIV.

Samson
Ntore, a community-based health worker with the African Medical Research
Foundation, said most practitioners in Ol Donyo Nyokie had greatly reduced the
severity of the cut, and merely made a symbolic incision rather than removing
the entire clitoris. However, the women could not make this public knowledge,
for fear of the repercussions if they were found to be shirking their
duties.

The Ol Donyo Nyokie community is a society fighting to cling to
their ways in the face of pressure to change from all sides. Most of them
support education, and education tells them to abandon FGM. Today, the
prevalence rate of FGM in this community is 100 percent. But the young girls of
the community insist that their daughters will never have to undergo the painful
procedure.

The Maasai and FGM

The Maasai are a nomadic
community who move around several districts in central Kenya and northern
Tanzania in search of pasture and water for their animals. Kenyan Maasai number
about 377,000. They are a proud people who have steadfastly clung to their
traditional values and customs, despite the fact that most other communities
around them have been influenced in one way or another by modernisation and
western culture.

Their lives revolve predominantly around their cattle,
on which they depend for meat, milk and blood – the main components of their
diet. As they have no need of the food grown by other communities, they have
been less exposed to the influence of other cultures, and have therefore been
able to maintain their traditions.

While admirable, the strength of
Maasai culture makes it resistant to change, especially traditions as deeply
ingrained as the practice of FGM. Like many other cultures, the Maasai have
myths about their origins, and the origins of their customs and traditions.

Folklore explains the origin of female circumcision in the story of
Naipei, a young girl who had intercourse with the enemy of her family, and whose
punishment came in the form of circumcision, a decision her family took to
prevent her from feeling the urges that had led her to commit the crime.

Since that day, in a bid to protect their honour and the honour of the
Maasai society, all Maasai girls who reach adolescence have been circumcised.
The aim of FGM is therefore to limit the sexual desire and promiscuity of girls.

The ceremony of FGM marks the coming of age of a girl; she sheds the
last vestiges of childhood and joins the league of womankind. It is
traditionally performed between the ages of 12 and 14 and is part of the
traditional rites of passage for girls, in order for them to be considered
adults in their community. A 2005 survey of the Maasai community in Ol Donyo
Nyokie (population: 665), found that 100 percent of girls above the age of 15
had undergone FGM.

Following the ceremony there is a period of seclusion,
during which girls are educated about their rights and duties as women – they
learn how to prepare food, take care of a home and children, and how to look
after their future husbands. Once this period is over, a girl is considered an
honourable woman and is free to marry.

The importance of this practice
among the Maasai is considerable. FGM is perceived as bringing honour to a girl
and to her family; by making her eligible for marriage it raises the status of
her family in the eyes of society. The Maasai have held to the custom in the
face of widespread criticism by Kenyan society and the international community,
and despite criminalisation of the practice by the Kenyan government in 2002.

A Maasai married woman. She, as the 99% of the maasai women, has undergone the type 1 FGM, clitoridectomy. The vast majority, 85%, of genital mutilations performed in Africa consist of clitoridectomy. Credit: Justo Casal

Many educated
Maasai men and women still favour the practice of FGM, not because they are
uninformed about the risks involved, but for fear of the social repercussions,
should they reject the custom. An uncircumcised woman remains a girl in the eyes
of the community, however much education she may have, or whatever status she
may attain in the outside world. For a woman who refuses to be circumcised, the
risk of isolation is great, the chances of finding a Maasai spouse are reduced
to almost nil, and her status in society will always be that of a child.

The Maasai FGM ceremony

The FGM ceremony takes place once
a year and brings together all girls who come of age during that year. It is a
large community event, marked by joyful revelry and feasting. A traditional
circumciser, usually an elderly woman with great experience, performs the actual
procedure. All the girls are circumcised on the same day and, until recent
times, with the same instrument, usually a sharp knife known as an “ormurunya”.
A paste made from cow dung and milk fat is applied to stop bleeding. The end of
the period of seclusion is also marked by celebrations officially welcoming the
girls into womanhood.

The Maasai practice type-1 FGM, also known as a
clitoridectomy, which involves the removal of the clitoral hood and all or part
of the clitoris. Physical effects of the clitoridectomy include :

–
reduced sexual desire
– bleeding, often severe enough to cause death
–
infection, particularly due to poor sanitary conditions
– risk of HIV
transmission due to sharing of knives
– complications during childbirth,
often leading to stillbirths

Can the Maasai change their
behaviour?

Despite their firm hold on their culture, certain aspects
of FGM have begun to change. In the era of HIV/AIDS, the Maasai are aware of the
risks involved in using the same knife for several procedures and, more often
than not, today each individual is circumcised using a different blade. Studies
by the non-governmental organisation, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (MYWO), show that
only 14 percent of circumcisers still use the same knife for several
girls.

This change may be slight, but observers and campaigners consider
that it nevertheless displays an openness among the Maasai to the idea that
aspects of their traditional culture can be altered for the better.

One
of the main approaches used by agencies trying to address the widespread
practice of FGM is the introduction of alternative rites that are still
acceptable and relevant to communities and allow girls to have a coming of age
ceremony, but exclude cutting of the girl’s genitalia. MYWO and the Programme
for Appropriate Technology in Health spearheaded a series of alternative rites
ceremonies across Kenya in 1996, and have continued to hold them annually since.
In these alternative ceremonies, girls are still educated about their role as
women in society, but receive more relevant instruction, such as lessons about
reproductive health and the importance of formal education.

The
alternative rites approach has had mixed results in Kenya, and among the Maasai
has met with only limited success. Well-intentioned as the alternative rituals
are, they do not provide the guarantee of low sexual desire that FGM does and,
therefore, cannot satisfactorily replace the custom as far as the Maasai are
concerned.

Conclusion

FGM is illegal in Kenya, but the law
is rarely applied against practitioners or parents who make their children
undergo it. The Maasai are a close-knit community who live largely by their own
rules, and have resisted modernisation. It is this adherence to their own
traditions that makes the eradication of FGM among the Maasai such an uphill
task for those seeking to end the practice.

Nevertheless, the outside
world is slowly influencing the Maasai way of life, with more girls and boys
being enrolled in formal education institutions and learning about the risks
associated with FGM. As this happens, it is hoped that the struggle to change
harmful traditional practices, such as FGM, will become easier.

The
eradication of FGM brings with it the consequence of forever altering the
traditions of what is one of the few remaining authentic African societies. The
tenacious hold the Maasai have on their culture is unusual, and many feel it
should be protected at all costs. The challenge anti-FGM campaigners face is how
to change this one harmful aspect of Maasai tradition without tainting the
authenticity, or undermining the richness, of their culture.