Let’s End FGM

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is girl’s circumcision.  Most of you may wonder what it is and where this type of circumcision is practised. I am a witness of these FGM practices and learnt its consequences. I am a girl who has been trying all I can to stop this spreading of female mutilation.

I came from the Rift Valley part of Kenya where the girl child is really discriminated against almost everything. The Samburu people from Samburu county have such cultures and still adhere to them responsibily. They believe that a girl should not be educated and a girl should be married off in the family to take away the burden of another mouth to feed. A girl is to be circumcised to make her feeling less active towards the opposite sex that is, men.

The girl therefore grows in such environment knowing that she should not be educated that education is for boys, schools are for men. That’s why I stand firm and strong to compliment my role model Dr. Josephine Kulea who is doing her best actually to stop this widespread epidemic in Samburu, Marsabit, and Turkana. She has educated over 2000 girls per year and still continues to secure and rescue more young girls undergoing this crisis.

I wish I had an ability to secure and rescue these girls like me who are undergoing this kind of pain. The female mutilation may seem a funny thing to the men or a rite of passage to the parents, but the reality is that the girls who undergo this FGM undergo severe bleeding during the incident, others may die at the moment due to a lot of blood loss. The survivors will suffer during giving birth in their womanhood stage due to the cervix failure to open.

My message to the world and to the communities and societies that practice this kind of circumcision is that the men cannot make it in life without women’s help. Women are the leaders needed  in everything. We need women in engineering fields, as doctors, as teachers, and presidents.  Let’s end FGM.