1200 Kajiado girls transition to womanhood in alternative rite that shuns FGM

KENYA: Eleven-year-old Shiluni Shirim glows in her traditional Maasai regalia as she delivers an acceptance speech at Rombo Girls Primary School in Oloitoktok, Kajiado County.

She had just won the cat-walk in a pageant to showcase the girls’ physical beauty, intellect and temerity as a precursor to the African Medical Research Foundation (Amref) community-led alternative rites of passage (ARP) ceremony.

The idea behind ARP is that the cultural celebration of a girl’s rite of passage to womanhood can be maintained without undergoing genital cutting.

The ARP ceremony therefore observes and respects the community’s tradition and ensures Shiluni and more than 1,199 other girls across Maasailand graduate to womanhood without undergoing the cut.

In the past, at this time of year, blood would be flowing as thousands of Maasai girls faced the circumciser’s knife, undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM), in order to be promoted to womanhood.

However, this time round, it was a different kind of blood that flowed as hundreds of animals were slaughtered to mark the event and litres of traditional brew consumed in celebration of this important day.

Although greatly esteemed by most nomadic communities, FGM is mostly done on minors and therefore constitutes a violation of children’s rights.

It also deprives women from making an independent decision about an intervention that has a lasting effect on their bodies and infringes on their autonomy and control over their lives as enshrined in the Unesco Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity of 2001.

Being a deep-rooted cultural issue, FGM is extremely difficult to eradicate and with community participation, it is impossible.

It is for this reason that Amref sought to partner with the Maasai community in Magadi and Loitokitok to came up with the community-led ARP approach.

“The community-led ARP model has achieved significant results in Magadi and Loitokitok and has national relevance in the on-going effort to eradicate FGM,” said Amref Africa Health CEO Dr Githinji Gitahi at the ARP ceremony held in Manyatta, Rombo, Loitokitok at the weekend.

The ceremony was a culmination of earlier interventions, which first focused on creating awareness of FGM as a harmful practise that has health risks for girls.

These initial efforts led to reduction of the practise among some communities, while others opted to minimise the amount of flesh cut. Others still turned to medical personnel to perform the cut.

The Amref team however, kept at it, seeking to establish an alternative rite of passage that still maintained the cultural celebration of the passage of a girl to womanhood, but without the cut.

“This intervention offers a culturally-sensitive approach that we hope will lead to long-term abandonment of FGM especially in communities where it is still rife,” Gitahi said at the gathering which brought together participants from the nine group ranches in Kajiado, Loitokitok, and Samburu and Tanga in Tanzania.

To make ARP truly community-owned the model engages cultural structures by reaching out to elders, morans, chiefs and traditional birth attendants, who also often double up as circumcisers. These structures are provide the network for key decision making in the community and have to be at the fore front if the rite is to be abolished.

“At first, it was difficult to convince the morans that FGM is harmful and that it is okay to marry a girl who has not gone through the cut,” says Lelein Kanunga, the moran chief in Magadi, who received training from Amref on the dangers of FGM.

He continues: “I also met with the elders to explain why the community needs to adopt alternative rites of passage. They thought I was mad and said I was a sell-out, but eventually they understood and supported me”.

Kanunga says the community is now reaping the benefits of ARP through improved school enrollment for girls, declining maternal deaths and a reduction of sexually transmitted diseases.

“The Maasai have apparently realised that an educated girl is worth much more than a few cows. Those who have gone on to university are now buying their parents cars,” he says.

To ensure the ARP intervention is sustainable, community gate keepers, who include political and religious leaders as well as county, government and provincial administrators, are engaged and these take up the planning, co-ordination and financing of the event.

Community policing, especially the “Nyumba Kumi” initiative, has also proven to be a key source of information sharing, which has led to many potential FGM events being nipped in the bud.

“Information sharing between the provincial administration and village elders helps to identify potential FGM events.

This information is then forwarded to the police for action,” says Olekarokia Langoro, chairman of county community policing initiative.

He says the Act criminalising FGM has ensured they can enforce the law without resistance.

“Our ARP strategy has achieved significant results in Magadi and has gained traction within other Maasai communities in Loitokitok and Samburu, and in Tanga, Tanzania,” says Peter Ofware, Acting Deputy Country Director, Amref.

He says an estimated 15 million girls are at risk of being cut by 2020 hence the need for sustainable interventions, adding that the State and “other partners need to recognise and adopt the ARP strategy as an innovative community-driven approach”.

Since 2009 a total of 7,000 girls have undergone ARP. Moreover, nine civil society organizations, three NGOs and 10 schools in Kajiado County and are rolling it out.

The use of local approaches such as local facilitators, role models and cultural exchange visits to sister nomadic communities are also working to stop FGM.

“Today we are here to learn from our Kenyan brothers how to deal with a problem, which is still widespread in our community,” said Kenyani Barsino a community elder from Tanga in Tanzania.