Replacing a Ritual of Genital Cutting
LENKISEM, Kenya — The first time cutting season came around, Nice Leng’ete and her older sister hid all night in a tree. The second time, her sister refused to hide.
For Maasai families, the cutting ceremony transforms girls into women and marks them as eligible brides. But to 8-year- old Nice, it seemed like a threat: She’d be held down by bigger women, and her clitoris would be cut. She’d bleed, a lot. Most girls fainted. Some died. Still, her sister gave in. Ms. Leng’ete, now 27, never forgot what her sister suffered, and she became determined to protect other Maasai girls. She started a program that goes village to village, collaborating with elders and girls to create a new rite of passage — without the cutting. In seven years, she has helped 15,000 girls avoid the cutting.
Her work mirrors national — and global — trends. Rates of female genital cutting worldwide have fallen 14 percent in the last 30 years. Here in Kenya, cases have fallen more than twice that fast. Kenya outlawed female genital cutting in 2011, and a special unit for investigating cutting cases was opened in 2014. But laws made in the capital often have little effect in the countryside.
In Maasai country, male elders enforce the customs. The belief has been that women aren’t women unless they are cut, which means men can’t take them as wives. Christine Nanjala, who leads the unit that prosecutes cutting, said: “Some rural old men asked us, ‘ What will we call this woman who is all grown up, married, has children and is not circumcised?’ They do not have a name for such a kind of woman.”
Ms. Leng’ete’s grandfather, her guardian, asked her, after her second escape, to explain herself. “When he realized I wanted to run away from him forever, he said: ‘Let’s leave her. When she wants to go, she will tell us,’ ” she said.
Her grandfather was an elder, so he couldn’t be overruled. But the community still ostracized her. “Families wouldn’t let me play with their daughters,” she said.
After the cutting ceremony, her sister was taken out of school and, at age 12, married off to an abusive man. Ms. Leng’ete became the first girl in her village to go to high school, and she noticed that girls admired her uniform. She told them she had opportunities because she had refused the cut; soon some turned up at her house, fleeing the ceremony.
Because she helped them, she had to hide, again. She changed her approach. She would bargain with the elders. Traditionally, women aren’t allowed to address the elders. Ms. Leng’ete realized she had a chance after they sent her to a workshop on sexual health. She told the elders she had to share what she had learned. They gave her permission to address the younger men, but none of them listened.
She made such a nuisance of herself that the old men told the young ones to sit with her. But only three would talk with her. Gradually, more came, and the topics expanded — from H.I.V. prevention to teenage pregnancy, to early marriage and, finally, to the cut. Ms. Leng’ete convinced the young men that cutting wasn’t good for the community, and they helped convince the elders.
After nearly four years of dialogue, the elders abandoned cutting. She and the elders planned a different kind of ceremony to celebrate girls, and the next year, the number of girls in school soared. Her campaign spread to the highest seat of Maasai power, the elders council. Ms. Leng’ete became the first woman to address them. In 2014, they abandoned cutting.
“It’s just the cut that’s wrong,” Ms. Leng’ete said. “All the other things — the blessings, putting on the traditional clothes, dancing, all that — that’s beautiful.”