“When we cut a girl, we cut her future short”

Jane is one of the thousands of girls in Kenya who have attended Amref-led training sessions on the negative effects of FGM/C and the culturally-rich alternatives that can mark the transition to womanhood. Her work to bring that knowledge back to communities like the one she grew up in is helping to end the pain and trauma of the cut.

Did you also believe that when you were growing up?

Before, I personally I wanted to undergo FGM, because in our family, my aunts, my grandparents—everyone except my mother—all of them are the cutters so that is the way, that is the route, that all the girls of our family face and we just take it as a normal thing.

My father was preparing me like: this holiday you have to undergo the cut and I was very happy about it.

What changed your mind about FGM/C?

I attended an Alternative Rites of Passage training [Amref-supported training] in Iltilal in 2019. The ARP training helped me in many ways. After the ARP training, I realised the effect of FGM and I decide to change my mind and also to convince my parents that FGM has zero benefit. Now, I can stand in front of people and teach and advocate such things. So that is the enjoyable part of the training.

You were under pressure to undergo the cut by your family. How did you stand up to say no?

One December, after I had come back from an ARP training, my father approached me again telling me that he has to call my grandmother so that I can face the cut because I'm already a woman, a real woman and he wanted that. I was so much afraid of my father’s words, because I knew and we have watched a lot of videos, we have undergone enough training... That one was alarming in my heart.

I remembered my friend Naire who died in the process when she was being cut. She died because her parents forced her to face the cut and she died. So that was something remaining in my heart, the painful and a scar that I will never forget.

My grandmother came in our home with a rope and my mother had already bought a razor blade. Those are the items that they were going to use to make me a “real woman” according to them.

What did you do then?

I ran away from our home. But where am I going? All my aunts are the cutters, my uncles too supported them. There are sixteen girls in my family, but all of them have undergone the cut. Then who am I not to undergo [the cut]?

I spent the night in my class teacher's home. [Then because the situation became worse, I couldn’t go home] and that forced me to stay with my sister during my holidays. I have never spent the holiday with my parents.

[Note to reader: Most cases of FGM/C occur during the long school holidays in December-January so that girls have several weeks to recover at home. This also means families avoid being suspected by teachers or others, and then potential prosecution under Anti-FGM laws that exist in Kenya.]

What does a day in the life of Jane Nkotai, end FGM/C advocate, look like?

I train girls from different schools. In Kuku ward we have 19 schools—some are far away so I have not yet reached them. Here’s what a typical day looks like for me:

6am: I will wake up and walk for 7 kilometers to a certain school.

9am-end of school day: I deliver the training at the school. This is the advocacy training—including teenage pregnancy, school dropout and FGM/C as the main themes. I deliver it for 1-2 hours. [I then meet with other schools and community groups before I start my walk back home]

7:30pm: By 7:30pm I am arriving home. There are dangerous animals, and it is risky to walk at night.

But, I have that passion in my heart to rescue at least to enlighten them to get the required training to know their rights just as [I] know my rights.

Just as I got the skills and the better skills during the ARP training. I use the chance to be give back to the community to train the girls, to talk with parents in the community, to attend some meetings with Chiefs to do a lot of things and to convince them that they have to give girls chance to go to school, to get the education that’s required.

What challenges and changes are you seeing in these communities?

[Sometimes I have faced] challenges from the community because it is not easy to convince the parents. But at the moment, the men they see I have already completed my form four [last year of secondary school], as the first girl in the community, they are very happy. And they got interested, such that if they have to give out example [to their daughters] they'll just say be like Jane, be like this daughter, she's doing well...

What’s your message to others?

The message that I have to all people that are still practicing FGM: Let FGM be something that people are practicing in the past. Be the change makers, let them stop it. Because it has zero benefit. It hinder[s] girls from fulfilling their dreams, from having courage…from speaking for themselves.

So, if you stop FGM, the future will be better. [Girls] will be able to eradicate poverty. They will be able to be good leaders, they will be able to fulfil their dreams, and their family and health will be much better.

So that is the message that I leave for them to say no to FGM. Instead of practicing FGM, let them use that energy that they're using on FGM, to educate their children, to give girls a chance to be in schools, to give girls a chance to be leaders of their dreams. That is my message to them.