Shatta Munira,18, a married mother of two in the Boni community, underwent female genital mutilation when she was aged nine. She says if she had her own way, she would have done things differently, but adds that what is done is done.
Munira, however, says there a good side to undergoing the cut.
“It's extremely painful and my heart bleeds whenever I imagine that my baby girl will have to face the same. However, it makes you acceptable among your peers and the community. If you aren’t cut, no one wants to relate with you. Other kids make fun of you and call you names and at the end of the day, no man will want to marry an uncut woman. If you are cut, however, your suitor pays a good amount of brideprice on your head, and it makes you feel important,” she says.
Munira had the entire external genitalia removed, and she winces when she remembers the experience.
“It's absolutely painful and it also takes weeks for one to heal. And after that, you are also subjected to the possibility of the wound reopening when you get married. For me, I had to have small incisions made using a razorblade because it was impossible to have intercourse with my husband before then. It's still painful to date,” she adds.
It’s a known fact that FGM is a life-threatening procedure, which involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia. The practice has been banned in Kenya since 2011, but is still practised in some communities. According to the 2015 Demographic Health Survey Kenya, the national prevalence of FGM has dropped from 38 per cent in 1998 to 21 per cent.
The known physical effects of FGM include uncontrolled bleeding, damage to the urethra and bladder, urinary infections, broken bones in the pelvis and legs from where women were restrained while struggling during the process, system infection, infertility and even death.
FGM affects the physical and psychological health of girls and women, decreases their attendance and performance at school, fails to meet their gender equality rights, and risks their lives at the time of FGM, at marriage and during childbirth.
It has long been linked to low literacy rates and early marriages both of which are highly prevalent among the Boni community in Lamu.
There is economics involved, too in that the bride price is higher for cut girls and it also increases a family’s status within their community.
Maendeleo ya Wanawake Lamu chairperson Fatma Salim adds that its impossible for girls to progress once FGM comes into the picture and that their sights are drastically reduced to just marriage and childbearing.
“If they were in school,once they undergo the cut they change. They might carry on with classes for a while but most of the time their minds are already focused outside the classrooms. However, for many of them, healing from the cut means one is ripe and ready for suitor and marriage. That's what happens. But we are gradually trying to change such mindsets and perceptions,” Salim says.
FGM is practiced for a variety of reasons. Sometimes at a certain age or alternatively as a rite of passage, often at puberty, which is a time of vulnerability and change.
Many young women subsequently rush to marry early, which leads to early childbirth, with resulting complications for many including obstetric fistula.
State interventions include establishment of the national Anti-FGM Board, introduction of a reporting hotline, a national roadshow programme and formation of a team of 20 dedicated FGM prosecutors.
According to Lamu-based doctor Geoffrey Omnaga, people are more aware that it is illegal, but there is still much social pressure on families to have their daughters cut.
He offers that even though cultural practices may appear senseless or destructive from the standpoint of others, they have meaning and fulfil a function for those who practice them.
The doctor, however, states that culture is not static; it is in constant flux, adapting and reforming. He states that people will change their behaviour when they understand the hazards and indignity of harmful practices, and when they realise that it is possible to give up harmful practices without giving up meaningful aspects of their culture.
“I understand why the Boni community feel it is wrong for them not to be allowed to carry out FGM on their women, but they must also come round to the realisation that giving up harmful practice doesn’t make them any less of a people. It doesn’t change anything about their women. They can still have their marriages intact and raise morally upright girls and women without this,” Omanga says.