Enolengila’s work is about helping to empower Maasai women. She co-founded and continues to work with Aang Serian, which means Peace House in Maasai. Over the past several years, through a series of meetings and educational efforts, Gemma and the other Aang Serian staff have seen many women who were practitioners of FGM turn in their tools and stop the practice. These women have now become mentors in their communities, educating others about the health risks of FGM and encouraging others to stop.
FGM is a complex issue. To people in urban areas and of other cultures it can be frustrating and hard to understand why people would continue a practice which is so clearly painful and fraught with serious health risks. Our typical view, and the position of most governmental and church agencies, is that cultures that practice FGM simply need to be told or forced to stop. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Aang Serian approaches the problem in a way that tries to address the cultural complexities of the issue.
First Enolengila clarified the terms and the differentiation between FGM and male circumcision. She explained that there has been controversy for years regarding the various words used for this practice, which have included ‘female genital cutting’ and ‘female circumcision’ in addition to FGM. Anthropologists have typically avoided the word 'mutilation' and had instead been using the term 'cutting' in order to be neutral and avoid interjecting personal moral judgement into the discussion. “Now most organizations including the World Health Organization, have decided that the term FGM is appropriate. Mutilation means the removal of tissue for no health reason or medical purpose,” said Enolengila.
Enolengila also warned, “It is important not to compare FGM to male circumcision.” There are several kinds of FGM that involve removing varying amounts of tissue from the female area*, often including the sewing of remaining tissue together, leaving only a small opening for urination. Her perspective is that “if you tried to compare male circumcision to FGM, you would be talking about removing the entire male organ*. All organizations have now agreed that the term 'female circumcision' is not accurate.”
FGM is performed as part of a girl’s initiation into adulthood. According to Enolengila, “more than 90%” of rural Maasai girls undergo FGM. Most girls are initiated between the ages of 12-15. The procedure itself is carried out by local women, usually midwives. The primary reason for initiation is so that the girl will be considered marriageable. Another reason the Maasai people say that FGM is necessary is to prevent and treat diseases. Many Maasai suffer from a condition that cause incessant itching, and HIV/AIDS is a major concern as well. In their view, FGM prevents the itching disease and prevents the spread of AIDS by reducing promiscuity.
The health risks of FGM include infection from the wound and subsequent pelvic infections, infertility, hemorrhage which can lead to death, loss of pleasure, extreme pain, shock, and complications in pregnancy and childbirth. Women can become outcasts as a result of some of the complications that arise from this procedure, such as incontinence. There is also the risk of the spread of AIDS both to the girls and to the midwives themselves who use razors blades and sharpened pieces of triangular metal.
Many church and governmental groups have attempted to stop this practice. Enolengila explains why these attempts have failed, "Efforts that are carried out without the right sensitivity just drive the practice underground." One of the reasons for this has to do with the judgement of one culture onto another, where ‘townies,’ formally educated people or westerners tend to see the people who practice FGM as backwards, or certain religions see initiation rituals in general as evil or as dark magic. These groups feel that the only way to stop FGM is to eradicate cultural traditions. The result is that the Maasai feel their identity and way of life is being threatened by outsiders trying to impose change. The Maasai fear that changes will include having to adopt values and lifestyles that they see as harmful. The Maasai have their own judgements about ‘townies’ and westerners, and they don’t want what they see as negative influences coming into their communities.
Because the Maasai feel their culture is threatened, they have actually become more resistant to change. The anthropological term reification is used to describe how a practice which was formerly part of a fluid, changing culture becomes set in stone and the reasons behind the practice become obscured. Enolengila explained how the approach that the government and churches have taken has caused FGM to become reified within the culture. For example, the practice of performing FGM on infants, which was previously rare, has significantly increased as a defense of their cultural identity and is therefore no longer even connected with initiation, according to Enolengila.
The difference between Enolengila's/Aang Serian’s work and other approaches is that it is based on respect for the Maasai as intelligent people with a thriving, evolving and valid culture. Their goal is “understanding the cultural reasoning behind such practises and honoring traditional values, while emphasizing the very real dangers of both HIV/AIDS and FGM.” FGM is an integral part of the functioning of the community and if you just remove it, there are needs that are suddenly no longer being met. Many of the practitioners and elders now recognize that FGM is dangerous, but they, as one elder put it, "don't know what else to do." Enolengila's work involves empowering the Maasai people themselves to find new ways to meet the needs formerly filled by FGM.
Enolengila described the social and economic factors that are interconnected with FGM. If the practitioners stop performing the procedure, they are in effect losing their jobs and livelihood. And if parents don't prepare their daughters for marriage by initiating them in a way that the community recognizes, they will not attain the "bride-wealth" (like a dowry), which is usually cattle, from the future husband. Many families depend upon the dowries they receive for marriageable daughters to support the rest of their family. But many of the midwives and elders are now more aware of the realities and dangers and have expressed willingness to change. In the insightful words of one midwife, “We have changed before, and we can change again.”
Aang Serian takes the perspective that if the Maasai are approached with sensitivity and respect, as logical people who have the right of cultural self-determination, they will be more likely to change in a way that truly works for them and can thus be a permanent solution as the communities find ways to integrate the change meaningfully. Therefore, the meetings and educational outreach have all been based upon “working within the Maasai cultural context,” stated Enolengila. It is Maasai women who are facilitating the discussions and leading the meetings. These are educated Maasai mostly from nearby Kenya who would normally be wearing typical western business attire and working in the city. But when they visit the rural Tanzanian villages, they don traditional Maasai clothes. The villagers feel comfortable with these teachers “because they are recognizably Maasai,” offered Enolengila. The Maasai women have been able to discuss the reality and health risks of FGM and HIV/AIDS in a culturally sensitive way.
Enolengila stressed how important the Maasai traditions are to the community. For example, girls who are not properly intiated are not only considered unmarriageable, they are also “ridiculed by the community for the rest of their lives.” Unlike churches, Aang Serian is not trying to do away with the Maasai rituals. In fact, Aang Serian’s website states that the organization’s work is about “preserving indigenous traditions and knowledge.” They realize the important role the initiation ritual plays in the community. So what they hope to accomplish is to keep most aspects of the initiation process, while eliminating FGM as part of the ritual and replacing it with new rituals. Aspects of initiation they want to help preserve are things all cultures seem to utilize, such as special clothing, songs, dances and food. An important part of initiation that has been accomplished through FGM requires that the girls face a challenge and show courage. So now it’s up to the members of the community, led by the Maasai peer educators, to create new rituals that meet this need. That is the point at which they are at now.
The educational meetings have resulted in the formation of the Olomayani Women’s Group. This group includes former practitioners of FGM and other female elders who have been sensitively instructed about FGM and HIV/AIDS and are now peer educators. They have taken charge of the efforts to educate others in a region of six villages about the health risks of FGM and HIV/AIDS. Now it is the Maasai women’s goal to stop FGM and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. They use traditional methods such as songs and story-telling to spread their message. And they are beginning to discuss ways to meet the community need for the initiation ritual as well as the economic needs of the practitioners and the parents.
Through the help of Aang Serian, they created a bead jewelry business, so the midwives who were formerly paid for performing FGM now have an alternate source of income. Aang Serian is trying to help the women find retail outlets to market their jewelry. One of the long-term goals is to have practitioners perform a new role in the initiation process as educators on “reproductive health, childbirth and motherhood, as well as traditional Maasai ways such as herbal medicine.” Over time they also hope that broader acceptance of new ways will allow more girls to attend school longer before having to marry, that is if there is more willingness to wait on the part of parents and husbands-to-be.
So far the results look promising. One of the most outspoken supporters of change is a long-time and very respected midwife who now understands that the reason one of the girls she performed FGM on died was due to blood loss from the cutting. Enolengila showed a photograph of several of the midwives and female elders who were proudly wearing robes that had slogans on the back about stopping FGM, in both Swahili and Maasai. Enolengila and others were actually quite surprised that the women chose to wear them.
There was another surprising result of Aang Serian’s work...refugees. Young girls from surrounding communities began arriving at their school. They were fleeing FGM and forced marriage. Most had walked for several days to get there. Enolengila illustrated the desperateness of the situation by relating a story about one 11-yr old girl who had walked for two weeks, sleeping in trees and falling out and injuring herself. The night before her scheduled initiation which would have included FGM, the young girl's mother woke her and told her to run away.
Aang Serian has so far been able to get a grant of $10,000, half of what they need to build a dormitory for girls escaping this horrific fate. They are now trying to raise awareness and raise funds so they can help more girls who are fleeing from FGM and forced marriage. The girls are able to go to school, and Aang Serian negotiates with the families to ensure an eventual safe return home for the girls. It costs about $50 per month to support a girl at the school, but they will accept any amount.
I came away from this talk not only wanting to take action, but wondering what I can learn from it with regard to my own life and culture. I think this sensitive approach and the positive results are very significant, not only for the Maasai girls and ending FGM, but for how we go about trying to create any changes in our collective lives. I am deeply impressed with the openness and courage of the women to take these steps which constitute a major shift, as well as the willingness of the Maasai men in the villages to work with them. If we compare this example to the problems we face in our own culture, are we, as people who need to change, this willing?
We seem to encounter great difficulty in our own society solving problems that require people to change their behaviors, such as obesity, drug abuse, violence, gangs, environmental degradation, etc. I just wonder how much our leaders and educators who are trying to promote a particular change, actually try to see the problems from the other’s point of view, and how much our failure is due to lack of enough depth of that kind of sensitivity. After all, our point of view is the logical one, so if we explain then why can’t they just understand and do what we ask?
The differences in thinking and behavior between groups in our society can seem as foreign as the Maasai people seem to our culture. We have equal or more trouble affording people different from ourselves the understanding necessary to make progress. We recognize their differing viewpoint, but continue to apply the same expectations to them we have of ourselves. I think it would be interesting to apply the methods from Tanzania to some of our own situations; to try to see the various interconnected needs that are being fulfilled by certain behaviors, and to try to empower people to invent creative solutions to meet their needs in new ways as they implement change.
* I don't mean to be overly euphemistic here, but since I will be sending this article in emails, I want to avoid words that will cause the email to be filtered. More specific information can be found on the website.
For more information, to order jewelry for retail sale, or to make a donation, go to www.aangserian.org.uk. I am also interested in forming a group to provide one or more sponsorships.
