West Pokot Female Genital Mutilators abandon the knife
By Evans Jaola
Over twenty weman who performed Female Genital Mutilation in central sub county west Pokot have abandoned the exercise that they have performed for fifty years.
Speaking over the weekend at Ortum Rescue Center, during a sensitization meeting, the women said they decided to abandon the practice after they were arrested and jailed after exposing girls to the outdated practice.
“I never knew the practice was prohibited. When I saw my colleague being jailed for three years for practicing the vice I decided to surrender, “said Maria Karlotou.
Karlotou said immediately she went to the church and asked church officials to pray for her since she never knew it was a sin to cut girls.
“I was always asking God to forgive since I knew it was our culture and we needed to protect it as aged women in the community,” she said.
She said for the past fifty years she was able to cut over 5,000 girls during December holidays.
She said poverty drove her to the practice. “I started the practice by cutting my first born daughter. When I did it correctly I knew I had got an income generating job. I could cut over 100 girls per season,” she said.
She said she abandoned the practice four years ago and asked church officials and provincial administration to set up a school to help girls further their education at the place where she used to cut girls from.
The women were trained by a local non-governmental organization Kepsteno Rotwoo Tipin on alternative sources of income.
The coordinator of the organization Moses Lokeres said the organization has been able to rescue the women but the major challenge they are facing is lack of income to start alternative income generating projects.
Lokeres asked any well wisher to help the women rebuild their life’s again.
“The women are talented in making beads if empowered they can venture into the project,” she said.
Central Pokot sub county assistant commissioner, David Mutuku said last year the region recorded few cases of FGM.
“Sensitization meeting we held through the year helped in ensuring that few girls were subjected to the vice,” she said.
Mutuku said only five cases were reported in the region and parents together with the circumcisers were arrested and prosecuted.
