Hiding from the cutters The fight to save girls from FGM
Half rising from the white plastic chair, he jabs a finger towards a girl and her friends sitting across the circle from him. “She will have a future,” said Patrick Ikware, almost shouting. “This cult is diminishing, but to eliminate it, we need to send our daughters to school and block our ears to the elders.”
The handful of others sitting on mismatched chairs on the grass outside the school in Masaba nod. A parents’ meeting for those opposed to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice almost universal among women in the Kuria districts of Migori county, western Kenya, is sparsely attended.
But Ikware’s daughter, grinning shyly at her father’s defiant words, like all their daughters, is still at risk. Relatives here, even neighbours, will entice a girl to the cutting ceremonies if her parents are not vigilant.
The campaign to stop the mutilation of the genitalia of hundreds of girls at the end of next month, when schools close for Easter, is in full swing. Holidays are when the cuttings happen, on girls aged six
