February 5, 2012

You are here: Home / Archives for CHIIRA MAINA

Purple Flowers

November 18, 2010 By
Email

Joining high school exposed me to a lot of things that before then had just remained ‘foreign’ concepts or were just far away from my grasp. One of this was trees. Having lived in a residential area with very few trees and most of them being the same, I did not give much thought to trees. High school brought trees into focus. The school was a bit old and had been started by the missionaries who wanted to replicate the surroundings of their motherland thus they ensured that they planted enough trees. Some were labelled with their scientific names but my interest in botany was cut short in my first year.

One of the dominant tree species was the eucalyptus. Dominant because they were close to the entrance of the school and thus everyone knew them. But the one that captivated me was the jacaranda tree (jacaranda mimosfolia). For about nine months in a year, the tree would be just there. For six months out of the nine, it would be leaf-bare. Looking emaciated and almost at the point of death. Then with the advent of Nairobi’s short rains in October, it would spring into life bearing small, pretty, purple flowers by the thousands. The purple would overshadow the green of the tiny leaves. If the trees were planted in a series/row, there would be a purple canopy only cut across by the brown of the branches.

As it would rain, the tree would also start ‘sweating’ and from specific points on its branches, water drops would fall. The October-November period marks the end of both the primary school education and secondary school education in Kenya. In October, the secondary school examination starts and runs for about a month while the primary school examination would run for about a week. The blooming of the jacaranda tree represented a significant period to thousands of candidates; a chance to continue with schooling or not to.

Being that time of the year, Nairobi’s areas that were previously occupied by the British are blooming all over with the purple flowers. Going down Valley Road is where the splendour can be seen. Other residential areas especially Woodley and Milimani estates have this kind of trees and it is just a pure wonder to see the purple flowers covering the ground; a purple carpet of sorts. But with mushrooming development all over Nairobi, these trees face a huge threat. They might soon be replaced by white-walled flats with red-bricked roofs and instead of purple carpets for children to tread on, will be replaced by ugly, grey cabro-paving blocks. Thika, the town that introduced me to the jacaranda tree, though has lots of trees that will hopefully be there for ages to come.

Image from here

Filed Under: Chiira Maina, Latest, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , ,

Mo & Me – A Documentary

November 12, 2010 By
Email

I can remember the day that I came to learn about terrorists who hijack planes. My parents seemed shocked and they kept throwing a certain name all around. I was really not sure what they were talking about and when my dad told me that Mohamed Amin had died, I thought it must be Idi Amin’s relative. But he further clarified that it was the man with one bionic arm who was a cameraman. I never gave it much thought even though the newspapers and the televisions were talking all about a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane that had crash-landed a few meters off the beach in Comoros.

Mohamed ‘Mo’ Amin had been the unfortunate hero. The one-armed man had tried to take control from the two hijackers who were just young men. Years later, I came to learn that through his pictures in Ethiopia during the drought of 1984-85 had moved the world. The pop stars in America lead by the big stars of back then, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and others had recorded a song that would be a hit and help save thousands of other lives in Ethiopia. And for a very long time that was who Mo Amin would remain to be.

Mohammed 'Mo' Amin

That was until last week when I got movies from my neighbor. There was the disc labeled Mo & Me. When Al-Jazeera had screened it, I never got the chance to watch it. I was not going to waste this moment. Salim Amin, CEO and Managing Director of Africa24 Media and Camerapix, is the famous son of Mo Amin. In this documentary he seeks to know more about the man he called father but would only see him for 3 months in every year. Mo was busy. Salim’s journey takes him from Nairobi where his grandparents had settled during the construction of the Mombasa-Kampala railway line. After the railway line is done, Salim’s grandparents move into neighboring Tanganyika (present day Tanzania Mainland) where Mo is born.

He is an enterprising young man who will go out of his way to help the family in any way that he can. At the age of 11 he buys his very first camera and starts to take pictures around Tanganyika and this is where his talent is noticeable. Mo soon drops out of class and decides to take photography seriously as a career. He is the first person to take pictures of John Gideon Okello when Tito decides to lead a mutiny in Zanzibar. The very first images showing Russian troops training in Zanzibar were captured by Mo. These images handed him three things; a prison sentence, fame as a superb photographer and a reason to leave Tanzania for Kenya where he would set up his first office.

Making Kenya his base allowed Mo to do more than just capture pictures of Nairobi’s life. The world had started seeing Nairobi as the entry-point into East Africa so he could easily land jobs with international media. Marriage for Mo was a problem even though he got married when he was back in Tanzania. It was done secretly since he was getting married to someone from another Islamic background different from his and the parents were not comfortable. It was in Nairobi that he got his only son and heir, Salim Amin.

Salim Amin

Ethiopia defines Mo Amin in two ways, he stood on top of the world as a photography master and he lost an arm. Mo Amin had to trek to one of those places that are quite far so that he could photograph the people of Ethiopia who were dying from the government’s lack of response to their plight. The images from that place brought Africa to the eyes of the world and the largest relief effort was organized. Mo had gone to cover the even of having weapons blasted out of existence and was filming when he lost his right arm. The explosion caught him and his arm had to be amputated at just below the shoulder. An year later, he had been fitted with a bionic arm and he was back to his rogue ways as the cameraman known as Six Cameras Amin.

The Live Aid DVD released by American singers following a broadcast of pictures shot by 'Mo' Amin

This documentary does not glorify Amin as the man who was the first person to interview Idi Amin Dada while exiled in Saudi Arabia. Neither was he the glorious man who took pictures of Idi Amin Dada’s victims after they had been shot by the police. He still is not the man who took one of the last pictures of Emperor Haile Selassie. He was a father who took his son to shoot the Safari Rally. He was the husband to a lonely wife. He was the boss to the people at Camerapix. He was a shrewd businessman. He was the man who went to receive his OBE from Queen Elizabeth in coat-tails and a bowler hat, not with his wife and son on the side but his English girlfriend. The man who came late for his son’s wedding straight from a shoot. It shows both the man and the hero. And I am lucky that I got to watch it on Kenya’s Mashujaa Day (Heroes’ Day) because I believe Mo Amin is one hero.

The documentary was produced in 2005 by Camerapix in collaboration with Al-Jazeera International.

Images from here, here and here.

Click here to download.

Filed Under: African Television, Chiira Maina, Latest, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

WANGARI MAATHAI – UNBOWED: One Woman’s Story

October 22, 2010 By
Email

When the Nobel Committee awarded the 2004, Nobel Peace Prize to a dark, African lady whose English still had the falter commonly found in her community, not many people knew her life story. It was not until 2007 that her story would go live in the form of a book. Wangari Muta Maathai is from Kenya and is commonly associated with the environmental work that she has been running in her home country. Her environmental work is spearheaded by the Green Belt Movement.

This is the autobiography of one courageous woman starts from the valleys that are in between Mount Kenya and the Nyandarua (Aberdare) Ranges where she was born in 1940. Vivid descriptions of green, lush and fertile highlands describe her childhood before the evils of colonialism and the destruction of environment mainly spearheaded by colonial policy follow later. It also chronicles her education under the missionaries, the famous 1960s Kennedy-Mboya Airlifts and life in America. What follows shows how the early Kenyan society had no place for women after she finds that a position she already had an appointment letter for, has been given out. Wangari is lucky to find a position at the same university but in a different department.

The book also describes her very first initiatives that she undertook to care for the environment while still performing the functions of a wife, mother and academic. A messy divorce follows later before she starts causing ripples in government leading to her jailing for several stints. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is when she takes on the Daniel arap Moi regime for dishing out Karura Forest to private contractors. This earns her a beating and subsequent jailing. This is not only woman’s life but the life of a 40-year old country; the “good” pre-independence years, the Emergency years, the immediate post-independence years, the rocky 70s, the head 80s and the liberating 90s. It also brings to light the role that African woman play in the whole build of society.

Images from here and here.

Filed Under: African People, Latest, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , ,

Blog Action Day 2010: Access to Water

October 15, 2010 By
Email

Nothing irks someone as opening a tap to find dirty water flowing out. That will most likely mean that you have to wait for some time before you can do whatever you want to do. The only thing that one can do is that they do not have to drink that water or be forced to cook with it. Yet in some of the poorest countries, this is a common sight and the water is not at their convenience at all. It is water that is flowing. Pity those who have to go with plastic containers to scoop it out and use it for their day to day needs.

It has become recognized as the easiest way in which numerous diseases spread dangerous diseases to both children & adults. Access to clean water in slums becomes a major challenge when you are in developing cities and the local authorities are managed. It is even worse in slums where piped water for many remains a dream. Many of these people have been forced to rely on communal water points that become mismanaged within a short time and they are back to square 1 only that they now have a tap. Water flows freely from a broken down pipe and they have to reach out with their containers in order to collect it and get something to use it for their daily uses. Rather compared to the rural areas, the slum areas are worse since lack of running water will mostly mean that sewage is also an issue.

When water comes into contact with sewage, the resulting scenario becomes one of diseases leading to death which will mainly affect young kids. By getting clean running water, this can be eliminated but these water points also require to be managed well. Rural areas are not also escapees from such scenarios only that in such areas the two main burdens are watering for the animals and the great distances walked before once can find clean water.

I had the privilege of living to a downstream area and nearby was a major river that ran into the Indian Ocean. The river was a mighty one and would often flood when it rained to a murky brown colour. At such times, my mother would always warn me against going anywhere that river. It was only much later after I moved to Nairobi that I got to understand why I could not go near the river. The river that gave Nairobi its name was always a blackish colour. It was a river that could have been the envy of all but it had been reduced to a moving garbage dump although with time, it had ground to a halt. Industries had also made the situation very bad indeed by dumping all their chemicals and unused raw materials into the river.

Those who were downstream were the ones who suffered. This is not only a problem that is confined to Nairobi but is also happening to other cities and countries. While in the rural areas, people have to go and get water at the streams and rivers, it is much more likely that they will be picking up a poisonous substance or disease. This can be avoided if only there would be stricter regulation to ensure that industries, especially tertiary ones, are discouraged from dumping waste into rivers. The best thing, even though it would take ages, would be to have piped water to the homes of the residents. This would have been treated and purified at professionally set up water treatment areas.

Fetching water from the rivers also poses some challenges especially in rivers where there are crocodiles. Kenya’s Tana River district is dissected into two by the Tana River that is infested with crocodiles. The number of casualties recorded when women had gone to get water is quite high. It would be quite easy to say that killing such crocodiles is the best thing to do & get rid of the crocodiles but these form part of the ecosystem. Getting piped water will help alleviate some of the problems for these people. When you also consider that some of Africa’s rural areas are hilly, there is the danger of rolling back to the bottom of the valley when carrying water.

It is high time that communities came together and started looking for a solution to this while working with government agencies.

Filed Under: Africa Matters, African Development, Chiira Maina, Latest, Popular posts Tagged With: , , , , ,

Obama’s Speech to the MDGs Summit

October 4, 2010 By
Email

We keep our promises and honor our commitments. – Barrack Obama.

Such words when said by the leader of a country that is involved in most development activities ongoing especially in the 3rd World countries may seem to be a mockery of the dire situations that exist in those countries. But that is the message that came across when Pres. Obama addressed the United Nations when world leaders had gone for the review of the MDGs in New York.

Development has come about yet the majority of those who are meant to receive it still face issues on other sides. MDGs on education may be on track but what about those who face hunger? The women who die when giving birth? The children who suffer from malnutrition? The five remaining years are quite short and it is only through working together with other countries that will have the MDGs achieved.

The approach that has been taken when tackling the problems that were meant to be resolved by the MDGs was the same and Obama said that development has always been seen in terms of what is expedited and not the returns that are received from it. Development may be hard to implement especially when working with communities who may not see immediate change at all. But that does not mean giving up. New strategies are what are needed to tackle this and in this regards, the entire development agenda of the United States will be overhauled. Focus will be on what is gained on the ground rather than what is spent by the aid agencies.

The main focus of the speech was that development had to come about and those that take the lead will be helped. Giving examples of countries that were changing the way their citizens have better services, Obama said that development has to be sustainable and they will work with partners that want to build their own capacity in providing services for their people. By incorporating the ideas that are being worked on in the providers, they will be able to do so much more since global problems affect us all and it would be imprudent to work on one angle and leave others.

While economic patterns cannot be forced down on the individual countries, some things should be enhanced in order to ensure that development is unhindered. These include;

  1. Entrepreneurship: Making the people in these countries become self-sustainable instead of having to rely on handouts.
  2. Proper governance and democracy: The right structures have to be put in place to ensure that business and development by extension continues.
  3. Free markets: Even with all the efforts put in place, it would be detrimental to have rulesb that block exchange of goods and services between different countries. A better Doha round is what Obama’s administration was looking at.
  4. Mutual Accountability and Transparency: Corruption must be eradicated and this should not only apply to the governments of the countries that the USA is willing to work with but also on the US itself and the corporations that work in such countries.
  5. Building on Talent: By working on the bottom, change can be moved all across the board and they will strive to work with women, daughters and the youth as a whole.

A final plea was to the other donor nations to ensure that they uphold to the same values that they ask of the countries that they are helping. Development projects that are not working would face the axe and those that were, would be enhanced. Governments, aid agencies, NGOs and the private sector would be best if they worked in areas that they were good at to ensure that there is efficiency and also put an end to the duplication of efforts. Development should be sustainable and that through the efforts of all, they could work.

This is what reads like the perfect ambitious way of doing things but it seems like it is the way to go especially with the out-of-the-box thinking that has been adopted by Obama. And as he says, development should not be about outflows but whether lives are changed and ensures that future generations have the security against falling back to the problem that has just been solved.

Wordle of Words Used in Obama's Speech

Thanks to @RafikiKenya for providing the actual speech and the Wordle used above.

Filed Under: African Development, Chiira Maina, Latest Tagged With: , , , ,

Food Clashes in Mozambique

September 7, 2010 By
Email

It caught me off guard. Actually several tweets alerted me as to what was happening in Mozambique but I had to check out several links before I could get a full idea as to what was happening. The situation was simply out of control in Mozambique and the people had decided to revolt following a 30% increase in food prices especially bread which is their staple food. Even I would have done the same thing. A 30% increase is quite bad for any economy’s residents. Thus I do not find anything strange in the fact that Mozambicans decided that the streets would be a better place to show their anger.

This comes barely two years after more riots following the increase in global food prices. All of these riots have left people dead even though they are all seeking the one basic need we cannot do without; food. While the international media picked it up as a sob-sob story, they are expected to do that, one would have to look at the genesis of the problem to realise how deep this all goes. Mozambique’s imports to exports ratio currently stands at 2:1 i.e. for every tonne they export, they have to import two tonnes. This may be a significant improvement from the 4:1 that they had a few years after independence but still quite low.

That might sound a bit confusing but as with most African economies, Mozambique’s main economic mainstay is agriculture although fishing is said to be largest single export particularly prawns. All the other economic sectors declined after the exit of the Portuguese in 1975. Mining, manufacturing and tourism were the worst hit. Well, guerilla warfare would have done that to any economy. The major issue is that Mozambique’s took a bit of a longer time to recover.

Due to all of this, Mozambique has been ranked among the poorest nations on earth and among the least developed nations. With agriculture, things have not been made any easier with the presence of the minefields that are still being de-mined. This means that the arable land that is available is quite low compared to the total land area. Throwing in the fact that most African economies are dependent on cash crops to cater for the foreign exchange bit leaves some bit of food shortage withing the country. Cashews and cotton are seen to be the country’s major exports from the agricultural sector. Both as cash crops require processing that is done outside the country rather than within. Malawi’s wheat production is just enough to cover 5% of the country’s needs.

Thus when the world wheat prices increased, Mozambique which mostly imports from the Russia and Eastern Europe, was badly hit. This lead to an increase in the food prices and although South Africa is nearby to them, the soaring rand value has not helped matters either for the former Portugal colony. In neighbouring Malawi, maize production has been doing well. Popular story has it that once Bingu wa Mutharika took over, the first thing he did was to create a system whereby farmers would receive maize seed from the government, plant it and then repay after the crops were matured. This is the same system that some of the NGOs and aid agencies use but now the government would be charging just enough to cater for the cost of the seeds.

The agencies tried to discourage this but within years, Malawi was self sufficient in terms of food production and could even export the excess maize. Malawi, once a basket case, is now the holder of the food basket in Southern Africa in terms of food production. These are two countries that have undergone nearly the same agricultural woes yet one remains stronger than the other in terms of food production and also food security.

Two questions arise out of this.

  1. Are African leaders doing enough to ensure their fellow citizens’ food security?
  2. Is it time that we as Africans made a return back to our traditional food patterns?

Malawi, through Mutharika’s ideas, has managed to transform the small country into a food producer rather than just a consumer. Although Mozambique may be suffering from the effects of the  guerilla warfare, it is high time that they focused more on production of food.

Food security, as has been seen in many other African countries, is of vital importance as compared to the foreign exchange earned and then lost in the process of export of cash crops and re-importing them. Once the basics, food security, have been secured, the rest will be easier.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. –Virginia Woolf

Images from here and here

Filed Under: Africa Matters, African Food, Chiira Maina Tagged With: , , , , ,

Africa and Technology

August 21, 2010 By
Email

The last thing that most people would never mind saying and not wince, is that Africa lags behind the rest of the world technologically. This is to say that even out of the un-habited continents, Africa pales in comparison. You would be pressed hard to argue against that except to say that Africa has the fastest growing technological spaces across the world. The numbers show it but they all say one thing that Africa still has a long way to go before they can get to the likes of the Americas and Asia. These are continents that have really large technology spaces. In terms of Internet access, Africa lags far behind and Google were able to show this in the following map depending on the hits that Google was able to achieve from every region. (The map is a bit outdated).

But over the past few years, there has been an exponential growth in technology in Africa. There is no arguing that mobile telephony has enabled that and according to Business Week, Nigeria had half a million telephone line in 2001 and by 2007 it was estimated that there were more than 30 million subscribers. The story could be replicated almost anywhere else in Africa. Mobile telephony would serve as the very first option of the residents getting access to the outside world. And with several changes in the mobile telephony sector, mobile money has come of age.

When Vodafone, one of the largest mobile telephony companies in the world, wanted to launch a new service on mobile telephony, they reached to their Kenyan subsidiary to test it. Safaricom, in Kenya, was able to show the difference that mobile money could make. All that one needed was a working phone and the network provider’s coverage. Within months, M-PESA was making a total difference to the largely un-banked Kenyan population. And year after year, the service receives incredible growth in subscribers. Other phone networks have introduced similar services and this can only be said to have been enabled by technology.

ICT penetration rates in Africa

While talking about technology, most people would be better off referring to hardware and not software. One would be hard-pressed to talk of any notable company that has been producing computers and it is an Africa country. Even the major computer manufacturers do not outsource to Africa at all. In the software industry, it is a different ball game. Day after day, young university graduates (and some drop-outs) will be hunched over laptops as they type out code to make applications. A good number of them are involved in coding for mobile phones.

Two things are responsible for this;

  • Mobile telephony is the current and the future of Africa
  • Open-user mobile operating systems

Most businesses are now shifting towards mobile telephony payment systems and this has encouraged developers to sit down and provide applications that are independent of the network providers. Other areas also require them especially healthcare and thus systems that are simple to use are coming up day after day. The only problem that hinders all this is the uptake of all this by the industries that they have been developed for.

It would be quite hard to talk of technology and Africa and not talk about Ushahidi. This is the crisis mapping solution that has been used in nearly all the continents. It is a typical showcase of what complex problems can be helped by simple solutions. It also runs alongside the SMS solutions everywhere it is deployed. The ease with which it has been deployed shows how much African solutions need not be unique to the African problems.

One of the upcoming features in Africa’s tech-space apart from the tech conferences and talks, are the incubation spaces that are coming up. Senegal, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Cameroon are leading in respect to getting these spaces although they can be set up anywhere as long as funding is available. These are spaces that will be able to help the African tech-preneurs be able to set-up and also help them with all the aspects of the business that they hope to come up with. With the funding, they are required to pay a minimal amount of the profits that they get so that funding is always available for the next generation of developers. It would be great to see whether the next big app will be as a result of these incubator spaces.

Africa may have just landed in the tech-scene, but it has started making ripples felt throughout.

Images from here.

Filed Under: African Development, Chiira Maina, Out of Africa Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Cut

July 21, 2010 By
Email


When a girl of five is told that she must do something for her culture, she will never think much about it. Especially if she lives in one of the remote areas of a country where access to healthcare and even basic education is a challenge. All she knows is that she needs to play with her age mates and also help out with the minor details in the house. Occasionally she will see her elder siblings go off and after sometime come back with some sort of behavior change, more respect is accorded to them and they will refuse certain names. This change will be much more seen if she has elder sisters with whom there is a slight age difference. But will she truly know what it all means from must a glance?

Most likely not. It will take years and years of being told what she must undergo when she is a certain age (seasons) for her to become a woman and be able to be a member of the community. Plus there will be festivities just like what her big sister got and presents plus she will marriage material. In some communities, marriage material may be spelt out or it may be kept hush hush to her. She will be curious as to what it is that happens.

All these form part of what has become known as one of the world’s worst practices in relation to women’s health as a whole. The actual act in itself is quite horrid. The girl will be woken up one night and lead out by her mother, grandmother (the most common relative), paternal aunts and maybe other female relatives. She will be forced onto an area where there are other girls who are her age and asked to spread her legs. Then the old lady will come and cut up her genital areas. She will be held down as the razor cuts through her and no matter her screams, nothing will come out of them. Then the stitching will be done just after the application of herbs to ensure that there is no infection. The stitching tool? A thorn cut off from an acacia tree. Taut string is used to ensure that the stitches hold up and a slight hole left for her to be able to pass urine. Some communities will also ask that the feet of the girl be bound such that she can only take small steps when she is walking. The girl will be kept in isolation to ensure that she heals completely.

The pain from cutting through such sensitive parts is quite unimaginable and very few girls can be able to make through the cutting phase only. They will most likely faint or some will even die due to massive blood flow. Should they survive this, then there remains the healing process which means that the girl is kept in isolation and is not allowed to be near her family at all. She will have to pee through the tiny opening and while the feet are bound, she has to pee all over herself. The saltiness of the urine will be like acid poured upon a wound. Many have described it as thus and they will faint in the process.

While most girls at the age that this is likely to take place, ages 9 to 15, will be either playing or learning how to decorate their dolls, some Kenyan communities will advice their girl child to go through this route of having to get “dismembered” just so that she can be deemed a woman. They will often be shunned if they do not do it and some are even expelled from their homes by their own mothers. And knowing that they cannot live with the shame of having not undergone such a cultural ritual, they will be run away and be condemned to a life of poverty and misery. But having the cut does not guarantee you not to suffer at all. A few months after the cut, most of these girls will already be marriage material and they can be married off to older men, who can pass for their grandfathers, for a few heads of emaciated cattle.

A married man’s relatives will want to see whether he can sire kids or not. This places pressure upon the girl to engage in sex with the sole aspect of getting a kid. Sex will be painful since, though the outside has “healed”, the inside is yet to heal plus the psychological aspect of it all. Well, she can always take it in and go ahead but once she is pregnant, then the inevitable happens. She will either lose the child during pregnancy, at birth, she will die at childbirth or both mother and child die at childbirth.

The death of the mother is always one of the most disastrous outcomes of this outdated practice that was said to be performed upon girls so that they follow culture and keep their womanhood. But this has now lead to massive deaths and in some areas of Kenya, even where there is education, some of these girls will be withdrawn from school just to undergo this practice. The chance of them coming back to school stands at almost 0% since they are most likely to be married off. Should they come back to school, there ‘uncut’ colleagues will be making fun of them saying how backward they are.

In short a practice, that is meant to help girls, as had been seen in the past, is now wrecking the lives of these young girls and scarring them forever. Some parents are even adamant that whatever may come, let it be since they are their daughters and no one can tell them anything else. In light of this, the government of Kenya, through collaborations with several NGOs, has empowered some of these traditional circumcisers to start offering talks to the girls instead of having to subject them to the ancient tradition of cutting them up. This has worked to some extent although some of the FGM still continues. Law enforcement officers and the provincial administration are the one tasked with ensuring that this (female genital mutilation) does not happen at the local level although some of them are susceptible to bribery from the parents of these girls.

Churches have been taking up some of these girls once they learn of their predicament and try to rehabilitate them. But they are also not 100% successful since some parents will say that their daughters were kidnapped and resort to the crooked law enforcement officers. The law has outlawed it but some of the officers are hell bent on getting rich at the expense of the future of these young girls and according to the UNICEF, it is estimated that about 32% of Kenya’s adult female (ages 15-49) population has undergone FGM while about 24% of the girl child has undergone the practice.

While reconstructive surgery would have worked for some other forms of bodily disfigurement, it is virtually impossible due to the remoteness of the areas where this form of mutilation occurs. But worse is the kind of psychological trauma that the girl will face in her day to day life. She will never be able to describe herself as the others who had not undergone FGM will describe themselves and the sense of shame she might feel if she were to come across a guy since she won’t be like the others that he has seen.


Filed Under: African Culture, Chiira Maina, Latest, Out of Africa, Popular posts Tagged With: , , , ,