Female Genital Mutilation In Meru County-The Misery Cut
Female Genital Mutilation in Meru County- The Misery Cut It is locally called ntano cia nkenye, which I rather call the misery cut. The practice is one of the oldest traditional practice among the Ameru as a ritual passage from childhood to adult among the girls/women. Basically, it involves total or partial removal of the girls’ genitalia-clitoris, how absurd that girls as young as five undergo the cutting! Even as other Kenyan tribes narrow down from the practice,we have relentlessly continued to cut our girls, making us a subject of interest locally and across borders. But how do we hold on to a practice that has no history (we don’t know when or where it came from) does it even have a single benefits? I am certain none. So why the cut? Maybe the Swahili have an answer for us, “Mwacha mila ni mtumwa “which translates to he who abandons his culture is a slave. That is it, I guess! FGM as a just a cut is an underestimating perception of the effects on wome...