Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 13, 1993 TAG: 9306130019
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TONI Y. JOSEPH DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: MERU, KENYA LENGTH: Long
Agnes Manyara's smooth, kidney bean-colored complexion is interrupted by a row of tiny, barely visible tribal markings etched beneath each eye. They are beauty marks, she explains. Not scars.
The scars, says the agricultural agent, are between her legs. Shiny keloids crisscross the otherwise soft tissue of her vulva. The scars formed more than two years ago, soon after her mother-in-law, her sister-in-law and several of her husband's other female relatives held Manyara down while a woman she had never met used a dirty knife to cut off her clitoris and part of her inner labia.
"I screamed," she says quietly. "No one came to my aid."
The genital mutilation changed Manyara, but not the way the age-old procedure is intended to transform the estimated 2 million African girls and women on whom it is performed each year.
For centuries, it has been performed as a rite of passage, a ceremonial ritual marking a girl's transition into womanhood. But in the past decade, as African countries have become more developed and African women more educated, attitudes have begun to shift.
Today, a growing segment of the African population looks on the procedure not as a revered cultural expression but as brutal mutilation with serious physical and emotional consequences. Manyara's self-esteem was sacrificed, and she suffered physical injuries.
In the 26 African nations where female circumcision is common, the procedure is at the symbolic core of women's traditional role in society. It is the starting point of a labyrinth of customs that in practice destin women to a life of hard labor, compulsory pregnancies, spousal abuse, illiteracy and serious health problems.
Among African men and women, misogyny is couched in terms of culture and tradition, says Dr. Donna Pido, an American anthropologist who has lived in Kenya since the mid-1960s.
"They say, `This is the African way.' "
In Africa, female circumcision - or as its critics call it, "female genital mutilation" - is most prevalent among nations that border the Nile and Niger rivers.
About half of Kenya's estimated 12.5 million females have undergone the procedure. In Somalia, the incidence is as high as 90 percent; in Mali, 75 percent.
In all, 100 million women and girls around the world have been circumcised, according to estimates by the World Health Organization. Experts also say the practice is on the rise where Africans have migrated - developed nations including the United States, France, Canada, Italy and Britain.
Female genital mutilation is either prohibited or officially condemned in most of the African countries where it routinely is performed. The Kenyan government outlawed the practice in 1982. But in the face of centuries-old social custom, laws are ignored and rarely enforced.
"The government is aware of the practice but has done little to prevent it and less to punish practitioners," says Lorna Mbugua, Nairobi spokeswoman for an international health organization based in Washington.
The procedure can be minor - a simple nick across the hood of the clitoris. Or it can be severe. In a method called "infibulation," the clitoris, inner labia and most of the soft flesh of the labia majora are scraped or cut away. The two sides of the vulva then are fastened together with acacia thorns, catgut or a glue made from sticky herbs or eggs. During the recovery process, which can take several weeks, girls' hips and legs are bound together to keep the wound from reopening. A hole smaller than a lentil is left to allow the passage of urine and menstrual fluid.
Increasing opposition is modernizing the procedure in many places. During a February rite in Belet Amin, Somalia, a traditional birth attendant injected five 8- to 10-year-old girls with Novocain. The attendant, 50-year-old Cosobo Noor, then circumcised each girl with a separate, sterile razor. As the initiates' mothers held the little girls' legs, women sang songs about womanhood and danced in the early morning light.
Traditionalists who compare female circumcision to its male counterpart don't know the facts, says Dr. Rosemary Mburu, a Nairobi gynecologist who has researched the subject. Unlike male circumcision, where the foreskin of the penis is removed, the female procedure results in far more than a cosmetic and hygienic change.
"Boys are circumcised," Mburu says. "Girls are mutilated. No one would disagree if they saw the problems we must try to solve in the hospitals."
In Kenya, at least 15 percent of the females who are circumcised die from bleeding or infection, Mbugua said. In Sudan, an estimated one-third of all girls who live in areas where antibiotics are unavailable die from complications.
Human rights lawyer Seble Dawitt wants the United Nations to oppose female genital mutilation along with other human rights violations.
"There should no longer be any question that this is a violation of bodily integrity, the right to health, freedom from discrimination, children's rights and right to life," says Dawitt, an Ethiopian who was circumcised as an infant. "Much of the failure to act has to do with the inscrutability of the family."
Agnes Manyara is now 37. She was attacked by her in-laws two years ago while her husband was in Nairobi taking a two-week course.
There was no warning. She had no earlier indication that her in-laws felt so strongly about circumcision. The subject didn't come up during marriage negotiations. And her husband, Christopher Manyara, purposely had sought out a mate who had not undergone the surgery.
Manyara, a balding, studious-looking teacher, says he knew his mother and sister were circumcised, but he wanted a wife who wasn't.
"The traditional women in my village were submissive," says Christopher Manyara, who is 40. "I like a woman who is straightforward."
A trusted college biology teacher had described to Manyara the harmful effects of genital mutilation.
In Agnes, Christopher found a woman who was raised to be independent. Born into a modern Protestant family of farmers, she was a ninth-grade dropout. But she later enrolled in a vocational school. She met Christopher in Meru, where both had come to work.
Circumcision, and all the customs that went with it, were never part of her upbringing. But when she married, she met many of the traditional expectations for Kenyan wives.
Traditionally in Kenya, women have had two roles: daughter and wife. Genital mutilation provided the connection between the two. Because the procedure reduces a girl's sexual desire and makes intercourse painful, families believe a girl will be less likely to experiment sexually before marriage. Virginity guarantees a higher bride price or dowry during nuptial negotiations.
"A mother's duty is to make sure her daughter marries well," says Mbugua of the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health. "But many men refuse to marry a girl who is not circumcised. An African woman has no status unless she is married."
Marriage offers financial security for Kenyan women, but it comes at a steep price.
Kenyan women traditionally work longer and harder than men. While the women may be laboring as much as 18 hours a day, it's common to see men in more relaxed settings on weekdays - chatting over cups of tea or lingering over a local newspaper.
Kenyan women often are too exhausted or too busy to eat properly or visit a doctor when they or their children become ill.
If a married woman does dare to assert herself, she risks being beaten. She also risks being abandoned - a desperate circumstance in a country that has few social services and no shelter system.
A late-1980s survey of 400 women in western Kenya showed that almost 45 percent believed that men have the right to "discipline" their wives.
Such attitudes spill over into other types of violence against females. In July 1991, 71 girls were raped and 19 others killed by male classmates at a co-ed boarding school. Male school officials casually dismissed the rapes, telling investigators that the boys didn't mean to harm the girls, even intimating that rapes were commonplace at co-ed high schools. Of the 30 boys charged with manslaughter, four were sentenced to prison. None was convicted of rape.
The attack served as a catalyst for the growing movement against violence toward women.
Agnes Manyara's in-laws kept her closeted in her home, hoping she would recover from her wounds before her husband's return. But they couldn't stop the rumors, which even reached her parents in Embu, an agricultural center 50 miles south of Meru.
Stories of the attack reached Jackson Kibeteru, the district's constable. He drove to Munithu a week later and questioned residents about Manyara.
"The mother-in-law said she didn't know where Agnes was," Kibeteru says. "She said she thought Agnes had gone to work around Meru; I assessed from her nervousness that she wasn't telling the truth."
A local boy told Kibeteru that the in-laws were holding Manyara captive in her bedroom. Fearing her injuries could prove fatal, Kibeteru dashed into the house before the in-laws could move Manyara.
When Christopher Manyara returned, he found his wife in the hospital and his mother and sister in jail.
Christopher Kibeteru filed charges against the women. Agnes Manyara had refused, for fear of retaliation.
The women eventually received probated sentences. The excisionist was never arrested.
Genital mutilation complicates childbirth, says Michelle Kelly, a nurse who manages the International Medical Corps' compound in Belet Huen, Somalia.
Dr. Florence W. Manguyu, a Nairobi pediatrician who heads the Medical Women's International Association, says there is a possibility that the practice contributes to a high rate of HIV infection among Kenyan women ages 15 to 25.
The Kenyan government has yet to conduct a nationwide study of HIV and AIDS infection rates. Manguyu bases her figures on AIDS-related deaths and HIV-infected people who seek treatment in clinics and hospitals.
Kenyan women only recently have begun to denounce the violence that permeates their lives. Like their Western counterparts, they are confronting these issues through grassroots organizations and at the ballot box.
When President Daniel arap Moi lifted the legal ban on opposition parties in late 1991, Kenyan women immediately began forming organizations dedicated to ending the political, social and economic oppression of women.
By the end of 1992, a handful of women had been elected to Parliament. While male candidates debated corruption in the ruling party, women focused their campaigns on food, water and medicine shortages, erratic school fees and violence against women.
The victories, though meager, have invigorated women. Still, change that will improve the quality of life for women and girls in Kenya will take considerable time, says Oki Ooko-Ombaka, co-editor of the book, "Women and Law in Kenya: Perspectives and Emerging Issues." A member of Parliament, he also directs the Kenya Public Law Institute.
"Women must politicize the issues in a way that their male colleagues empathize with them," Ombaka says. "They [the men] must be persuaded that the concerns of women are the concerns of all Kenyans."
by CNB