As Kenyan Maasai abandon female circumcision, elders lead the way

In the days leading up to Feb. 6, more than a thousand Maasai people traveled by foot to Loita Hills, in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.

They had been called to gather at the crest of a hill overlooking the spare, dusty town of Olmesutie. Under a vast, cloudless sky, towering palm branches were mounted into the ground, a sign that something historic was under way.

It was the day that cultural elders would publicly announce that the Loita Maasai were abandoning female circumcision, also known as female genital cutting (FGC), as a rite of passage – the first such declaration in Kenya.

One in 5 Kenyan women ages 15 to 49 have undergone FGC, according to the country's 2014 Demographic and Health Survey. Among the Maasai, it is

Pushback to the ban‘Our culture is beautiful and living’