It is that season again.
Boys coming face to face with the knife. Previously this was a community’s
affair and it was awash with all the ash smearing, ice-cold river immersion,
music and chanting and feasting after the boy had crossed to the manhood side.
Of course this is fading and is an individual family’s business in most homes.
It has even become more removed from the family by the church taking over this
process and many parents are choosing this option.
Good counsel is imparted, that, I observed as
I sat in one such class. Another notable observation is, it is not a boy affair
only, the girl is a participant too. The girl, it is argued needs counsel as
much as the boy as she hits teenage and experiences all the new goings-on in
her body.
But there is a catch, and
this one is beyond the church and the law. Once the girls are released to go
back home, for some it is not over yet with the ‘counsel.’ Visits to an aunty
or grandmother are quickly planned and the girl is set off. This visit is very
deliberate and not just some regular one. It has been thought out and planned.
The girl comes back home a ‘woman’ or so she is told. A very interesting revelation
came to me during this session; girls who get circumcised do not make friends or
hang out with uncircumcised girls. I almost laughed at this nonsense until it occurred
to me how sad it is. What if they were friends before the nasty cut? Their
friendship dies because one is minus some body part?
In the 21st
century, 13 year old girls have their clitoris slashed off and that is the very
mild ones like in my community, the kikuyu. Other communities get more
adventurous with the mutilation and leave the girl clean of all the flesh
around her vagina. Some of these girls die due to blood loss, they get infections
from use of unsterilized instruments, some experience painful sexual
intercourse thereafter etc. The myriad life threatening consequences cannot be
exhausted in this write-up.
Female circumcision or as
it is commonly known female genital mutilation (FGM) is still alive and well
and statistics may say that it has gone down but it is not coming to an end any
time soon.
Female genital mutilation was made unlawful in Kenya in 1997 and an anti-FGM bill passed in October
2011. This is one of those tricky laws where a culprit is not easily
apprehended. It is not as easy as the Police pouncing on changaa brewers. A
girl is secretly taken to a relative’s home and the circumciser, an elderly
woman goes to her. The girl is too young and gullible to understand that what
is about to be done to her is unlawful and not beneficial to her in any way.
She is the one who should cry out but she is gagged in every important way; she
harbours no knowledge besides the lies she has been fed about becoming a woman
and having to live a life of miserable singlehood; no man wanting to marry her
if she does not become a woman. This is why this practice continues to thrive
with abandon. Fresh girls are out and being readied to lose part of their
reproductive parts.
Another among the many
sick reasons female circumcision is practiced is to rein in sexual desire. Why
should women experience sexual urges? Their sexual activities should be as a
response to their man’s sexual urges only! Now this is the kind of hogwash that
we need to save every girl from. Every girl needs to know that they are in
charge of their bodies and how to react to every urge they experience, the consequences
of their reactions and the joys of the feelings in their bodies. I shudder to
imagine what a miserable life mine would be if some self-imposed haggard
grandmother had sliced off my clitoris. Every woman’s sexuality need only be celebrated but not be put under attack.
