DESPITE the growing confidence among advocates against female genital mutilation (FGM) that the practice was fast declining, the reality in some parts of Kajiado district indicates the contrary. To the dismay of anti FGM activists, this ancient practice is flourishing.

“Even after we have succeeded in convincing traditional circumcisers to surrender their tools of trade, some community health workers have opted to provide secret home based FGM services, ”says Mrs. Phoebe Mollel, the co-ordinator of Kajiado district’s Anti-FGM campaigns with government of Kenya/GTZ cooperation.

Mrs. Mollel explains that the fresh crop of circumcisers was taking advantage of the gaps in the Children’s Act.

While the Act stipulates that circumcising a girl below the age of 18 years is violation of her rights, the new FGM practitioners have been keen to spread a false gospel that a young woman over the age of 18 has the right to choose to undergo the cut.

They have succeeded in convincing Maasai communities, keen to keep the old ways that the government was not opposed to FGM as long as it was conducted by qualified medical personnel: “Community health workers and some medical personnel have taken advantage over this confusion to do business,” says Mollel.

The Ministry of Health/GTZ’s 2004 FGM survey indicates that Kajiado district’s prevalence rate stood at 93 percent with areas like Isajiloni, Ildamat, Isinya, Ormesuo, Ilbissil, Enkiwanchani and Osilalei, recording the highest number of cases.

Kajiado is among the MOH/GTZ’s recently established six sites across the country, all of which are targeted under the government’s new Anti-FGM, HIV/Aids and Reproductive Health Complications campaigns strategy.

Mrs. Dorcas Kung’u, the co-ordinator of the programme says that six clusters including Meru, Kuria, Trans-Mara, Tharaka, Kajiado and Daadab refugee camp would be given priorities in Government’s anti-FGM, HIV/Aids and reproductive health programmes.

In the programmes, the Ministry, she says has also developed an Integrated Community Dialogue Groups, (ICDG’s).

This strategy aims at bringing on board, all the different age groups in FGM-practicing communities in a bid to openly discuss ways of eradicating the practice and seeking alternative rites of passage (ARP’s) to replace it.

Twenty-year old Reuben Ole Apureti is a liaison officer in Isinya’s Anti-FGM Forum. He uses poems and songs to deliver the massage to his age mates some of whom he has recruited into his newly founded drama club.

“Some people find my poems and songs very entertaining that they have been able to give up the practice,” says Apureti. During the first ever Anti-FGM Declaration held in Isinya Township on 6th December 2006, 100 young girls confessed to having escaped the cut, after finding out that their parents had colluded with circumcisers to carry out the ritual on them.

The declaration ceremony, dubbed, “EMURATARE NASIPA ENKISOMA” (EDUCATION IS THE TRUE CIRCUMSCISION), was also attended by over 12 former traditional circumcisers who not only publicly denounced their trade but also handed over their tools to Mrs. Mollel.

At the ceremony attended by men and women from all walks of life, they sang in a queue, carried placards and twigs all in the name of castigating the practice as they took oaths in turn, never to condone FGM again.

“It is quite a good thing to view education as the only and best alternative rite of passage for every Maasai girl-child, this reassures the entire community of a brighter generation, we want to prove to the entire world that Maasai female children have a claim to space in modern Kenya,” adds 82-year old Mrs Dorcas Sitelu, a former circumciser.

“We are no longer interested in blankets, goats and cows as equivalents to the value of our daughters, we will curse anybody out to ruin the future of our daughters from today,” she adds.

Mrs. Kung’u, says government is keen to mainstream HIV/Aids, Reproductive Health Complications(RHC’s) into the Anti-FGM component’s campaigns: “Educating people on the laws that protect children’s rights has not been done properly, some communities have been made to understand that alternative rites of passage and meidal circumcisions are one and the same thing,”, she says.

Some communities, insist on carrying out FGM on girls over the age of 18. This is a result of weaknesses in the Children’s Act. The Act, stipulates that when a girl under 18 years of age undergoes FGM, her rights are deemed to have been violated. People do not feel bound to the law when the girl to be circumcised is 18 years or older.

“Whether it is done traditionally, medically, on under- 18s or older girls, FGM remains illegal. It is banned in Kenya,” warns Kung’u. This ban includes medicalised FGM. Mrs Kung’u admits that the battle against FGM is not an easy due to stiff opposition from individuals and communities that see the opportunity to get aware with the financial windfalls form the practice.

Early this year, the Director of Medical Services Dr James Nyikal re-affirmed that Government’s commitment to eradicate FGM: Dr Nyikal said, “FGM poses greater challenges to women’s reproductive health as well as our battle against HIV/Aids campaigns.”

He added that regions where prevalence rates of FGM were still highly reported, recorded the same trends in HIV/Aids and related reproductive health cases such as still births, obstructive birth complications and abortions.

Ms Marceline Nyambala, a programme co-ordinator based at Association of Media Women in Kenya (AMWIK) says: “FGM is no longer a sustainable culture by any definition and every sober-minded person should resist it.” says Ms Nyambala.