the initiate my friend and I had escorted to the event. I wondered intensely as I walked, why the different responses? What did it mean? How would the stomping girl now be regarded by these women?
Later, removed from the immediacy of the genital cutting operations, I felt that my conversations with both women and men on the subject were unsuccessful and distorted by a lack of deep communication. My own response seemed so visceral, so uncontrolled, and so partial. I then realized that the questions I was asking emanated from my assumptions, from preconceived notions that reflected a very personal view on what was taking place. They clearly were not aligned with how others in the community regarded the events. A friend admonished me, saying “Nyangi,6 you are asking the wrong questions” when I confessed my inability to comprehend what was happening around me. Though I continued to observe the ritual activities for the duration of the community’s genital cutting season, I resolved not to write about any of it since I was apparently missing the point.
In witnessing initiations then, I gained a sense of how these events unfold, the level of communal excitement, and the ritual events that most closely surround genital cutting. I also experienced my own reaction to observing the rituals, and I reflected on these ceremonial circumstances and outcomes. I remained reluctant to write about genital cutting because my personal response was so overwhelming. At that point I was unable to even begin to understand what these events meant to the lives of Kuria people. Though I continued to speak with women, girls, men, and boys, I did not feel that I made much headway toward unraveling the complex cultural strands that are woven together to make this event one of the key moments in both an individual’s life and the life of the community. Though I sought explanations, none were offered to me that seemed to add up to the momentous transformation this ritual causes in a young person’s—especially a young girl’s—life. “This is our tradition”—a response I received repeatedly when asking why people do this—hardly seemed to explain anything. No one offered or articulated any reasons more comprehensible to me than that.
A decade later I was offered another opportunity to engage with this topic. In the summer of 1998, I began to get word from various friends and informants in Kenya that initiations would be held that year. By the fall, a letter from a former assistant confirmed the news, announcing that the Abairege would be circumcising at the end of the year. He invited me to join his family in celebrating the “circumcision,” of his oldest brother’s firstborn (a daughter). His grandmother had asked him to write and invite me. This kind and generous woman was a key informant who treated me as a granddaughter, and taught me a tremendous amount about Kuria life, welcoming my participation in the daily life of her family. I was touched and became excited at the prospect. Not only would the rituals take place that I wanted to understand for so long, but I would also be an integral part of the celebrations for at least one of the families participating.
This personal invitation was followed by a second letter, from a Kuria academic.7 His letter, too, was galvanizing. In describing the reasons why it was essential for me to attend the ceremonies, he entreated: “Kuria people of Kenya have maintained a distinct culture and traditions despite constant encounter with Western culture. However, there has been no proper way in which these have been preserved. As regards circumcision ceremonies they are being eroded by modernity but [have] maintained resilience over past years.” The closing sentence convinced me to go: “The next circumcision ceremonies will take place in [three years]” (B. K. C., pers. comm.). I certainly did not want to wait any longer, as I finally felt ready to open my mind to this ritual in ways I could not a decade before. So I began to prepare to participate in the initiation season, which nowadays begins in late November when schools close for the end of the school year and concludes in the beginning of January.8
The initiation season I witnessed from beginning to end in 1998 is the core of the account offered in this narrative, and many of the descriptions of people and events stem from that time. But since then, and through multiple visits, I have spent a total of nearly three more years in the field and have witnessed two more genital cutting seasons. Those events, along with scores of conversations, interviews, discussions, and debates, inspire the content of this account, as they form the basis of my understanding of the changing meanings initiation holds for the various participants who play a role in the ceremonies. Since 1988, when I first witnessed genital cutting in initiation ceremonies, the controversy has continued to grow. Genital cutting—most often labeled in the West and increasingly in Kenya as female genital mutilation, or simply FGM—has become a hotly debated topic on the international scene, decried by feminists, policymakers, immigration officers, human rights watch groups, and health-care providers, to mention only some of the most prominent opponents. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines female genital mutilation as all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for nonmedical reasons (Oloo, Wanjiru, and Newell-Jones 2011, 4). This debate, along with initiatives by various NGOs, has informed the understandings and practices around genital cutting in Kuria communities. As the “tradition” has become increasingly contested and reshaped by pressures from numerous directions, it seems appropriate to document these pivotal cultural moments.
In this ethnography, I describe initiation rituals of Kuria people as they were taking place around the turn of the millennium. I represent an outsider’s growing understanding of emic, or insider, conceptions of genital operations and their roles within society, as a counterbalance or an addition to the ongoing furor over this custom in practicing and nonpracticing societies. This account documents the rituals and highlights the transformations taking place—in both indigenous conceptions and social practices—in an environment where genital cutting has become increasingly scrutinized. I aim to create a cultural record of an old practice that has been challenged for about a century, and that may eventually be stopped. But for now, it persists.
This ethnography describes genital cutting as a set of grounded practices, occurring within a particular sociotemporal location. Though the location might be seen as remote, this genital cutting ties rural Kuria society into a truly global discourse. This parallels the ways in which the socioeconomic and political lives of the people are carried out locally, yet shaped by the current and historical realities of their connection with the colonial and postcolonial world within which East Africa developed over the past century. Though genital cutting persists in Kuria society, the custom is not a primordial throwback but rather a practice responsive to individual and family concerns arising in response to sensitization campaigns and efforts to eradicate the practice. Genital cutting has not fallen into desuetude. It continues to be meaningful even though people realize the validities of the criticisms. Genital cutting still embodies and enacts useful, even powerful elements guiding everyday life. More than two camps (those who adhere to the practice and those who oppose it) exist in Kuria communities, and the direction people align with is shaped by local circumstances and alternatives that combine endogenous and exogenous elements for consideration. So, rather than being simply prescriptive, culture offers a range of options for defining acceptable and unacceptable courses of action. Cultural practices change as innovation and borrowing expand the acceptable options and eliminate or discard other variations that become outmoded or impracticable.
Politics of Writing
Studying genital cutting—in its multiple dimensions as a social, cultural, political, ritual, and individual-altering experience and institution—places the anthropologist at the nexus of intersecting discourses. An investigation of arguments and meanings that various parties articulate vis-à-vis this practice reveals a contrast between outsider and insider perspectives, and also a diversity of positions within each camp. In Kuria, as in other societies that practice genital cutting, the attitudes of individuals and groups reflect the variety of cultural contexts, responses to socioeconomic and political change, and the ideas people hold about identity as mediated by descent, gender, ethnicity, and, increasingly, class. These attitudes also reflect the influence of outsider positions on local practices. Drawing on participant observation in four initiation seasons in rural Kuria District of Kenya, and extensive correspondence via mail and e-mail over the decades, this account highlights the multiple realms where
