Livelihoods: The Business of Cutting in Kenya

Kenyan tribal economics requires that the pleasure-giving parts of female genitalia be removed for families to exchange property or money during marriage. The Guardian speaks to one of the procedure’s practitioners.

The Guardian reports:

There can be few women who understand both the agonies and the economics of female genital mutilation better than Margaret, a grandmother in her 70s from Pokot, northern Kenya.

Her life has spanned the clumsy colonial efforts to ban the practice, which saw it become a cultural cornerstone of the Mau Mau uprising against British rule, right through to independent Kenya’s decision to reimpose the prohibition.

She has also put more girls than she can remember under the knife. When Margaret started, the tool of choice was a curved nail; more recently this has been replaced with imported razor blades.

Read the full article here. Read about the Guardian’s campaign to end female genital mutilation and lend your signature here.

The Guardian:

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.