African Woman and Child Feature Service

February 6 was marked as the international day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation. However, for those who earn a living out of cutting girls each year pokes holes into their business as clients reduce.

Were it not for her decision to shun her job as a female genital mutilator, Chepochekai Amokon would be a busy, and a rich woman right now.

The December holiday is the peak season for Female Genital Mutilation in East Pokot, from where Amokon, 80, comes from.

Fame

Her career as a mutilator started back in 1951 and was determined to continue the practice until four years ago when she changed her mind.

“My mother who was a mutilator known all over the village for her ‘perfect cut’ taught me the art,” says Amokon.

Back at Akwichatis village, Amokon was widely known and respected for her perfection in initiating girls into adulthood. Parents flocked her home requesting she attend to their girls during initiation. “I got a lot of money, goats, goat skin and beads as payment for my work, that was my means of earning a livelihood,” says Amokon. While she kept the goats, Amokon sold the skins and jewellery and used the money to buy more livestock. She owned hundreds of cattle and goats all from the practice.

Her joy was derived from seeing more and more girls undergo the practice which is still rampant in East Pokot despite its being outlawed and massive campaigns against it being done not only locally but internationally as well. But Amokon’s life would change in 2006 when she lost all her livestock to raiders from the nearby Turkana Community.

“I was devastated, I cried all day for my livestock and wondered why I had struggled all those years, only for me to be left with nothing,” says Amokon.

Worse still, she had to leave her village due to insecurity and start living at Kokwatoto, which was relatively safer. The village where she lived is further from Turkana and she felt safer there. However, Amokon, who was already booked for her job would not attend to her potential clients as they did not move with her.

At this village, Amokon got to interact with people who had learnt facts about FGM courtesy of Action Aid, an international organization that fights this brutal practice.

Grieving over her loss of livestock, Amokon was more than willing to shun a practice which had earned her a lot of wealth over decades only for her lose it within one night.

“I was taught that girls who have undergone FGM face the risk of dying while undergoing the practice due to excessive bleeding and what was meant to be celebration would turn to mourning,” confesses Amokon.

Though she claims no girl ever died in her hands among the hundreds she mutilated, Amokon says she has heard of several who have died due to excessive bleeding.

“Last December an initiate died as she was being taken to hospital. I heard she died due to excessive bleeding,” she says.

Climate change

In the past it was not common for girls to die as there was enough food and milk to nurture them after the cut. However, climate change has caused death and massive reduction of livestock while crop production is almost zero in the area due to drought. “There is no food to give to the initiates so that they regain lost energy and blood. In the past, there was plenty of sour milk, millet and sorghum,” she reiterates.

Amokon who doubles as a traditional birth attendant compares a woman who had undergone FGM to one who had not delivered under her watch. The earlier one, she said took more time and underwent a lot of pain and bleeding during delivery.

Unlike her, the one who had not undergone FGM had a much easier time. “She was in less pain, took a shorter time in labour and bled less,” she says.

Tradition

To make it a generational practice as culture dictated, Amokon passed the skills to her first born daughter Chepochonyir Lopenyo.

“But I have also convinced her to shun the practice, it is cursed and its proceeds too are cursed,” says the granny. Both mother and daughter have since abandoned the trade and turned into anti-FGM campaigners.

Though residents of this area are slowly embracing alternative initiation and shunning FGM, the former mutilator says it will be a big fight. She says the practice is deeply rooted especially in the interior villages where most people lack exposure.

When they think they are of age, girls request their mothers to take them for initiation either due to peer influence or pressure from their fathers who are usually hungry for dowry.

“I do not regret having cut numerous girls as they came to me voluntarily and I neither forced them nor marketed my skills,” says Amokon.

She says girls needed to go to school to catch up with other communities that shunned the practice many years ago and are at the forefront in leadership and professionalism.

“If only I had gone to school, I would be a gynaecologist, helping women in Pokot with complications during delivery,” says Amokon. Though her daughters passed though the rite of passage, the granny says she will not support the same to be done to her grandchildren and children of the next generation.

Choice

However, she leaves it to the girls in her community to choose between education and early marriage which follows after FGM.

“Every time I talk to a young girl, I leave it upon her to choose, but I warn her of the consequences,” says Amokon adding that she pities her agemates who are still practicing as mutilators. “I heard the Government will arrest such women and I fully support the move.”

The World Health Organisation estimates that 100-140 million women have undergone FGM worldwide while another three million are at risk especially in Africa. The practice is recognised as a violation of human rights including mental, health and equality rights.

The Millennium Development Goals aim at eradicating this practice in a bid to promote education for girls and enhance women’s empowerment.