{UAH} 'It ruined my life': School closures in Kenya lead to rise in FGM
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'It ruined my life': School closures in Kenya lead to rise in FGM
Maikona, Marsabit County, Kenya - Thirteen-year-old Gumato* can finally walk again without feeling pain.
The hot desert wind blows through her curly hair as she strolls between the portable, dome-shaped huts, made of acacia roots and covered with grass mats, colourful textiles and camel hides. In the near distance, a caravan of more than 50 camels passes by.
Gumato is from the Gabra, a nomadic camel-herding tribe that lives in a semi-arid region in northeast Kenya. Until mid-March, she had put on her pink blouse and dark blue skirt every day to go to school. Nowadays, she only wears her long traditional dress.
"I loved school and dreamed of becoming a science teacher," says Gumato.
Her dream seems to be further away than ever.
Three days after Kenya recorded its first COVID-19 infection in mid-March, the government decided to close all schools. A few weeks later, Gumato's parents decided to have their daughter undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), which is prohibited in Kenya but still practised by some tribes.
Since the enactment of laws against FGM in 2011, its prevalence in Kenya has dropped from 28 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 in 2008 to 21 percent in 2014.
But due to its great ethnic and cultural diversity, there are significant regional variations, with prevalence ranging from 0.8 percent in the west to more than 97 percent in the northeast (where the Gabra and Borana - which are Somali-Oromo ethnic groups - live) and 78 percent in the south, which is home to the Maasai people.
"We were happy that schools closed, because this gave us a better opportunity to circumcise our girls," Gumato's mother explains as she sits on the earth floor beside a small fire inside one of the huts. "School holidays normally are a bit short for the girls to fully recover."
She wanted her daughter to undergo FGM, she says, because Gabra men only marry circumcised girls.
In early April, Gumato and two other girls were taken to a house in a village behind the hills without any roads or official administration. They were told to wash themselves with cold water - believed to be an anaesthetic within their community. Then, one by one, they were cut.
Two women held them from behind, two women held their legs, one woman covered their eyes and another did the cutting.
"It was extremely painful but I kept quiet, as the women assured me that if I would scream or cry, I would be seen as a coward and nobody would be willing to marry [me]," Gumato recalls.
After the procedure, the wound was not treated or cleaned. "We stayed with all the blood while our thighs were tied together for four days," says Gumato. "We had to pee in a bucket and were forbidden to drink any water."
After seven days, the girls were returned to their homes.
But Gumato's wound became infected. She was scared it would never heal, she says. "For two months, I felt so much pain while I could hardly walk." It still hurts to urinate, she explains.
Gumato worries about her future now.
"The predominant belief in my community is that as soon as a girl is cut, she's ready for marriage," she explains. "My family is poor, we have only five sheep and seven goats and not a single camel."
Her father did construction work in their village before the coronavirus crisis, but now construction has come to a standstill and the family struggles to find enough food.
"I'm afraid that I'm soon married off because there is no school so we just sit idle at home while when I'm married off, my father will receive three camels as dowry," she says.
'Schools were a safety net'
"Before this corona crisis, schools were functioning as a strong safety net," explains Talaso Gababa, a facilitator with the medical organisation, Amref Health Africa.
"Teachers educated children about the risks of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). When a girl would be cut while school was open, schoolmates would communicate this to the teacher who would report the parents to the police. This prevented many parents from having their daughters circumcised."
Gababa is 26 years old and, like Gumato, is from the Gabra tribe. She has advocated shortening school holidays, as those are the riskiest times for girls.
"Imagine if we would have known what kind of catastrophe we were heading [towards] with this on-going school closure," she reflects.
FGM is not the only danger facing girls. With schools closed, they are also more susceptible to forced early marriage and sexual assault.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) recently forecast that an additional 13 million girls globally could be forced into child marriage, and two million more than would otherwise have been expected could undergo FGM between now and 2030 as COVID-19 disrupts global efforts to end both practices.
Even before the pandemic hit, 33,000 girls around the world were being forced into early marriage every day, frequently to much older men, according to the UNFPA report, and an estimated 4.1 million were already at risk of FGM this year.
Public awareness programmes against FGM have been disrupted in many countries, while rescue centres which help girls fleeing forced marriages and FGM have been closed partially or even totally due to the pandemic.
"I had to send home 24 out of our 52 girls," says Priscilla Nangurai, the founder and director of the Grace Nanana Rescue Center in Kajiado.
As the centre also functions as a school, it had to comply with the nationwide school closure due to the coronavirus pandemic. "After negotiating with the government, I was allowed to let 28 girls stay as they are on very high risk to be forced into child marriage after undergoing FGM," Nangurai explains.
"With the parents of the 24 other girls, we had already started a reconciliation programme, where the parents signed a contract promising not to have their girls circumcised or married off. Unfortunately, after sending them home, two girls have been threatened with circumcision already," she says.
She calls this a "very scary" situation and is currently in contact with the local chiefs who promised to stop the parents having their daughters undergo FGM.
Nangurai says her centre is able to track the girls who have returned home via local community leaders and because they know their addresses. "But as this isn't the reality at most Kenyan schools, I wonder how many girls nationwide will ever return to school when they reopen," she says.
--
-- Maikona, Marsabit County, Kenya - Thirteen-year-old Gumato* can finally walk again without feeling pain.
The hot desert wind blows through her curly hair as she strolls between the portable, dome-shaped huts, made of acacia roots and covered with grass mats, colourful textiles and camel hides. In the near distance, a caravan of more than 50 camels passes by.
Gumato is from the Gabra, a nomadic camel-herding tribe that lives in a semi-arid region in northeast Kenya. Until mid-March, she had put on her pink blouse and dark blue skirt every day to go to school. Nowadays, she only wears her long traditional dress.
"I loved school and dreamed of becoming a science teacher," says Gumato.
Her dream seems to be further away than ever.
Three days after Kenya recorded its first COVID-19 infection in mid-March, the government decided to close all schools. A few weeks later, Gumato's parents decided to have their daughter undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), which is prohibited in Kenya but still practised by some tribes.
Since the enactment of laws against FGM in 2011, its prevalence in Kenya has dropped from 28 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 in 2008 to 21 percent in 2014.
But due to its great ethnic and cultural diversity, there are significant regional variations, with prevalence ranging from 0.8 percent in the west to more than 97 percent in the northeast (where the Gabra and Borana - which are Somali-Oromo ethnic groups - live) and 78 percent in the south, which is home to the Maasai people.
"We were happy that schools closed, because this gave us a better opportunity to circumcise our girls," Gumato's mother explains as she sits on the earth floor beside a small fire inside one of the huts. "School holidays normally are a bit short for the girls to fully recover."
She wanted her daughter to undergo FGM, she says, because Gabra men only marry circumcised girls.
In early April, Gumato and two other girls were taken to a house in a village behind the hills without any roads or official administration. They were told to wash themselves with cold water - believed to be an anaesthetic within their community. Then, one by one, they were cut.
Two women held them from behind, two women held their legs, one woman covered their eyes and another did the cutting.
"It was extremely painful but I kept quiet, as the women assured me that if I would scream or cry, I would be seen as a coward and nobody would be willing to marry [me]," Gumato recalls.
After the procedure, the wound was not treated or cleaned. "We stayed with all the blood while our thighs were tied together for four days," says Gumato. "We had to pee in a bucket and were forbidden to drink any water."
After seven days, the girls were returned to their homes.
But Gumato's wound became infected. She was scared it would never heal, she says. "For two months, I felt so much pain while I could hardly walk." It still hurts to urinate, she explains.
Gumato worries about her future now.
"The predominant belief in my community is that as soon as a girl is cut, she's ready for marriage," she explains. "My family is poor, we have only five sheep and seven goats and not a single camel."
Her father did construction work in their village before the coronavirus crisis, but now construction has come to a standstill and the family struggles to find enough food.
"I'm afraid that I'm soon married off because there is no school so we just sit idle at home while when I'm married off, my father will receive three camels as dowry," she says.
'Schools were a safety net'
"Before this corona crisis, schools were functioning as a strong safety net," explains Talaso Gababa, a facilitator with the medical organisation, Amref Health Africa.
"Teachers educated children about the risks of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). When a girl would be cut while school was open, schoolmates would communicate this to the teacher who would report the parents to the police. This prevented many parents from having their daughters circumcised."
Gababa is 26 years old and, like Gumato, is from the Gabra tribe. She has advocated shortening school holidays, as those are the riskiest times for girls.
"Imagine if we would have known what kind of catastrophe we were heading [towards] with this on-going school closure," she reflects.
FGM is not the only danger facing girls. With schools closed, they are also more susceptible to forced early marriage and sexual assault.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) recently forecast that an additional 13 million girls globally could be forced into child marriage, and two million more than would otherwise have been expected could undergo FGM between now and 2030 as COVID-19 disrupts global efforts to end both practices.
Even before the pandemic hit, 33,000 girls around the world were being forced into early marriage every day, frequently to much older men, according to the UNFPA report, and an estimated 4.1 million were already at risk of FGM this year.
Public awareness programmes against FGM have been disrupted in many countries, while rescue centres which help girls fleeing forced marriages and FGM have been closed partially or even totally due to the pandemic.
"I had to send home 24 out of our 52 girls," says Priscilla Nangurai, the founder and director of the Grace Nanana Rescue Center in Kajiado.
As the centre also functions as a school, it had to comply with the nationwide school closure due to the coronavirus pandemic. "After negotiating with the government, I was allowed to let 28 girls stay as they are on very high risk to be forced into child marriage after undergoing FGM," Nangurai explains.
"With the parents of the 24 other girls, we had already started a reconciliation programme, where the parents signed a contract promising not to have their girls circumcised or married off. Unfortunately, after sending them home, two girls have been threatened with circumcision already," she says.
She calls this a "very scary" situation and is currently in contact with the local chiefs who promised to stop the parents having their daughters undergo FGM.
Nangurai says her centre is able to track the girls who have returned home via local community leaders and because they know their addresses. "But as this isn't the reality at most Kenyan schools, I wonder how many girls nationwide will ever return to school when they reopen," she says.
--
"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"
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