Let girls be girls

A girl aged 13, whose name we withhold to protect her privacy, is held upright by two women on each side. Her feet are frail. She cannot walk despite her effort.

As her mother and other women sing and dance, an elderly man canes her five times on the back and pours ice-cold water on it. Isabella screams as the two women continue to hold her firm. It would be a taboo to lay her down.
To her screams, the hundreds of villagers cheer. It’s proof that she is not going to die after all.

The old man forces her mouth to open and squeezes some herbs into it. She is now shivering because of the cold water.

Twenty three minutes ago, she was forced to open her legs wide to allow the circumciser do her work. If she had died, her body would have been taken away into a different clan’s land. In a forest it would have been covered with leaves, as she would have been an outcast, according to the Kuria traditions.

The girl is just one of about 3,000 girls of the Wakira and the Wanyabasi clans of the Kuria community who were circumcised this year in Kuria East and West and in Tarime, Tanzania.

This year, the number of girls who were circumcised from the two clans was the highest ever. Reason? Word had gone round that the government was planning to have the circumcisers and parents who subjected girls to the knife, arrested. Such parents believe that the cut reduces libido and is therefore good for morality.

From the Kuria East Gender and Social Development officer, Mathias Mwita, we learnt girls as young as seven years had been circumcised because the parents didn’t want them to miss out.

Most of the girls, he told us, were taken to Tanzania for the cut because it is illegal to circumcise girls in Kenya.

According to Mwita, officials from the government, Kuria community elders and several Non-Governmental Organisations had agreed to end the retrogressive tradition.

“We signed a declaration together and vowed to stop the cultural practice but the community has since gone against the agreement,” says Mwita.

This is the first year that the Kuria community is taking its girls for circumcision since the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2011 was signed into law.

To avoid hefty penalties, Kurias, especially the ones in Kehancha, Kerege, Chirato and Kegonga have been taking their girls at night to Northern Tanzania, where they are circumcised in Tarime District.

Our reporters witnessed the rite of passage being administered at Sengesa Village in Tarime.

It begins with a group of elders, known as the Inchama, meeting at a riverbank in March the year the clan is supposed to circumcise its girls and boys, as long as the year does not have the digit 7.

“Digit seven is ominous,” says elder Alloys Mwita Magori. So, in 1997 and 2007 there was no circumcision. The rite was postponed to “safe” years.

During the meeting, the old men will seek green light from ancestral spirits to circumcise the children.

The consultation involves several rituals, the most common being the slaughtering of a goat and putting the meat in a calabash for each of the sexes.

The calabash is then placed on water as the elders appease the ancestors with song and dance. If the calabash floats, the circumcision will go on. If it sinks, it is a cursed year and the respective sex will not be circumcised.

According to Magori, going against the will of the ancestors will see many children die.

After the ritual, the elders announce to the heads of the four clans, Wakira, Wanyabasi, Wairege and Warenchoka, that the year is safe for circumcision.

“But not all the clans will circumcise their children every year. It can be done after two to three years, explains Magori. This year, only the Wakira and the Wanyabasi circumcised their children.

Come December of the ‘safe’ year, the clan elders meet for a pre-circumcision ceremony called Bosera, where they feast and appease the ancestors with barbecue and fermented porridge.

By the time the girls are brought before the circumciser, women who will mind, mentor them and take care of their wounds will have been identified for each girl.

Early in the morning, the girls were taken through a courage-inducing session, where they were warned not to shed a tear, scream, and blink or move their legs during the ordeal.

“If they do any of these, they are labelled as cowards,” an elderly woman told us.

At exactly 8:30 am, our girl and three others, who were the third lot of the day in Mrs Elizabeth Magori Chacha’s circumcision list were called. Each had paid a circumciser’s fee of Sh500 or TSh27,000.

Outside her homestead, the four girls sat down on their petty coats. Their chaperones ensured that they were ready and handed Mrs Magori a pair of gloves and new blades for each girl.

The ‘surgeon’ sprinkled some herbs on the girls ahead of the cutting.

Immediately after the operation, the girls’ minders would place a mixture of powder and smashed herbs on the wound.

The old men would then ask them to stand on their own after which cold water would be poured on their backs.

The girls were then decorated with a number of ornaments and a motley presents that ranged from bank notes to handkerchief presented; actually pinned on their berets.

For more than four hours, the girls moved round Sirare and Isebania border town, as women celebrated their graduation to motherhood.  Young men joined the girls in several stops and congratulated them.

By the end of the day the minders took each of the girls to their homesteads, where they are expected to take care of them until their wounds are healed.

During the healing the girls, who are mostly of ages nine to 14, are taught how to cook, handle men and childcare.

By the time they are completely healed; about one month later, several suitors will have visited their homes, asking for a hand in marriage. And they have the choice to get married or not to.

Despite the enactment of the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, 2011, the practice is rife in some parts of East and West Kuria Districts.

The act criminalises the procurement of a person to perform FGM in another country, the use of one’s premise for FGM, the possession of the tools to perform the rite and even the use of derogatory or abusive language.

Hiding the happening of the rite to the police is also an offence.

In this part of Kenya however, the culture is more important. Shunning circumcision is a sure ticket to social rejection.

Leah Boke told us that girls escape it at the risk of being beaten and abused, especially by their elders.

“Sometimes, when the parents who are against FGM are away from home, girls abducted and circumcised,” she says, tears welling in her eyes.

Cover of darkness

Uncircumcised girls attract stigma even at school. Leah is one of the 50 girls who have assembled at the Komotobo Rescue Centre of the Maranatha Faith Assembly.

The girls, according to the centre’s manager, Julius Marua, usually arrive at the centre under the cover of darkness.

Some come here without spare clothes while others will be nursing wounds. At the centre they are taught life skills, according to Marua.

In the evening they are coached by mentors who are successful in the society, yet they did not undergo the cut. They stay at the centre until the end of the circumcision season, which is usually announced by the elders too. Some girls however choose not leave.

“This helps them regain their self-esteem which might have been eroded by the mockery from the community and their friends who have undergone FGM,” says Marua.

Do it ‘CCM style’

He said the practice persists because most of the girls who have undergone the cut drop out of school for early marriage and are usually pregnant.

“Most of those who are lucky to return to school after the practice are usually rude because they feel that they are now adults,” says a teacher at the centre, John Ng’ariba.

The practice encourages cattle rustling because some parents have to steal cattle from neighbouring communities to feed their guests.

The advocacy against female circumcision, according to Mwita, has prompted mothers opposed the custom to bribe circumcisers so that they can perform the cut on their girls the “CCM” style.

CCM is the abbreviation for Tanzania’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi and the term is used light-heartedly to refer to the neighbouring country.

By CCM style they mean a slight, symbolic incision so that blood can be seen to dupe cultural die-hards into believing that a circumcision has been done

One woman said she had to bribe a circumciser with Sh300 on top of her Sh500 fee to let her perform the surgery, the CCM style.