Masai women erupted with mocking heckles as a community elder, wrapped in a traditional red blanket, claimed that female genital mutilation had all but stopped in their community in southern Kenya.
The women know that mutilating young girls by removing their clitoris and inner labia — framed as a rite of passage — is still an entrenched practice in some remote villages of Narok, about three hours from the nearest paved road.
One local nurse said about 80 percent of girls in the area are still affected, despite the practice being made illegal in 2011.
“Why are you telling people that you have stopped, when we have teenage girls coming to the hospital who have been cut?” asked a woman in the crowd, which was gathered in Entasekera village to discuss the issue.
The women nodded emphatically, while the men sat stone-faced.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) has survived decades of pressure to end it, from British colonialists, and later Kenyan and global non-governmental organizations.
It still exists not only among the rural southern Masai, but also in Kenya’s northeast — with parts of the Somalian diaspora community in the region reporting rates more than 90 percent — as well as in some urban areas and among educated groups, where campaigners have highlighted the rise of so-called medicalized FGM.
A 2022 government survey said the number of affected teenage girls had fallen from 29 percent to 9 percent since 1998 nationally, but that does not reflect reality in some areas.
“We don’t circumcise girls, because the culture has changed,” Masai elder Moses Letuati, 50, said before admitting one of his four daughters was cut.
Many of the Masai men at the meeting said it should end, although one said only because an “uncut woman is better” in bed.
“I was screaming and struggling,” said Martha, 18, who was 10 when two women, under pressure from their community, cut her at home in Narok East on her father’s say-so.
She later fled to a local shelter run by activist Patrick Ngigi, who said his organization, Mission with a Vision, has rescued about 3,000 victims of FGM since 1997.
The shelter, supported by the UN Population Fund, has CCTV and panic buttons to protect the girls from fathers and elders who disagree with its mission.
“It’s a dangerous job... You make so many enemies, but slowly with time, you get used to it,” said Ngigi, who has faced curses by community elders.
The work is endless: At the village meeting, Ngigi was quietly approached by women pleading with him to take six more girls at risk of FGM.
The practice persists among the community thanks to beliefs that a girl should be cut ahead of marriage, and should she not undergo it, she would face ostracism.
Ngigi said change requires education, dialogue and an end to corruption.
“When a policeman comes and finds you doing it, you just give him something and you continue,” he said.
Police officer Raphael Maroa rejected the accusation of corruption, but admitted FGM was entrenched, with many girls now spirited over the nearby Tanzanian border for the procedure.
He criticized the community’s lack of education — roughly half of Narok’s population is illiterate, 2022 figures showed — but then admitted that his two daughters had also been cut to avoid “conflict with my parents.”
The Masai remain among Kenya’s poorest communities and have faced decades of land loss due to colonial settlers and now tourism, and some remain suspicious of outsiders trying to change their way of life.
One young Masai man said he had friends who still believed in FGM, but said girls were no longer cursed — a form of social control used by elders — for refusing it.
Cynthia Taruru would disagree.
Her father cursed her when her college-educated sister rescued her from FGM aged 11.
“I could see myself dying, or not getting children, because I believed my father had just cursed me,” said Taruru, now 23. “I had to pay my father a cow to get the curse lifted.”
Local health officials said victims of FGM often suffer fistulas and obstructed labor in childbirth, exacerbated by long distances to health facilities.
Many young women, hoping to protect their families from arrest for allowing FGM, opt for home births, raising the risk of complications and death, although officials said data was lacking on exact numbers.
Entasekera Health Center nurse Loise Nashipa, 32, described FGM as “a monster.”
“There’s bleeding, and there’s pain, and infection,” she said, adding that most cutting was still done by elderly women in unsanitary conditions.
Officially, FGM rates have fallen, “but I think it’s because some deliver at home,” Narok County Hospital head nurse Rhoda Orido said.
As night fell at Ngigi’s shelter, the girls celebrated the graduation of Cecilia Nairuko, 24, who ran away from FGM and forced marriage at the age of 15 and has qualified as a psychologist.
Beaming, she danced around the facility in a graduation gown that has passed from one girl to the next.
However, her mood darkened when asked about her family: Her father and three of her four brothers have not forgiven her.
She knows there is one path back to her family: “If I can earn enough money, he’ll forgive me.”
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