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Pokot girls preparing for thieir 'coming out' celebration after undergoing FGM several weeks earlier
How has Uganda’s new Prohibition of FGM law affected the people who practice it? 

The number of Sabiny girls cut in Kapchorwa, Bukwo, and Kween Districts greatly increased during the last circumcision season (November/December 2010). Because of Kampala media interest, and the relative accessibility of the Kapchorwa area, Ugandan newspapers were full of articles about Sabiny FGM and the people’s “outrage” at the new law. 

Far less information has been generally available about the Pokot, another major Ugandan cultural group that practices FGM. Getting to the Pokot home areas requires two days’ hard travel from Kampala, on sketchy roads frequented by bandits and armed cattle raiders. Few reporters go there unless they travel with politicians, as on President Yoweri Museveni’s visit to Amudat last fall. Even researchers sometimes refuse to complete studies that require them to travel in insecure Pokot areas.

So we are left with general reports that "many" Pokot girls were cut in 2010, starting in the summer. We do not know if their numbers were extraordinary, or if the people were "outraged" at the new law. 

An alarming anecdote was posted as a comment February 2 on Wildugandablog.com by Tityon Ambrose, a Makerere University researcher. He reports that he found two Pokot girls in the bush attempting to cut themselves because traditional surgeons had been scared away by the new law. The girls were literally taking their lives into their own hands. They might easily have bled to death if the passerby had not intervened. 

Similar things happened in Kenya in the 1950s when Kikuyu local councils (at the urging of colonial officials) banned clitoridectomy. A number of Kikuyu girls defiantly cut their own genitals with razor blades, and for the next several years they pressured other uncircumcised girls, some as young as 8 or 9, into cutting themselves. However, these “Ngaitana” ("I will circumcise myself"), as they were called, were not considered properly circumcised by older women who had gone through the authentic rituals themselves. The girls were obliged to be re-cut by professional circumcisors. (It turned out that the Ngaitana had no idea of what the operation really entailed and had left the clitoris intact.) The struggle against FGM continues in Kenya today, even though it has been illegal since 2003. 

Clearly, culture trumps law. What the self-circumcisors are seeking is to be “proper” women, exercising the personal right to cultural expression. We want to see all girls and women freed from FGM, but we think the way to do it is to provide education and lifestyles that give freedom of choice and promote culture change.
 


Comments

Tityon Ambrosr
03/09/2011 4:44am

Thank you very much Rebecca. it is true that culture trumps law. Organization like Godparents should come up with a different approach that is bottom oriented approach. Providing education to girls is good, but this is not enough to remove the idea of circumcision from their minds. this is because Pokot girls do not value education. my opinion is basing on my research, 10/10 girls who have reached secondary education do not go for FGM. but the problem comes when we only have few POkot girls who are at school. please you need to apply another method in line with educating girls. otherwise in my own opinion Pokot can easily abandon FGM compared to Sabiny. thank God Bless your work.

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