Rebby Chepchumba Sebei, 29, vividly remembers that early morning, when she escaped from her parents home to her aunt’s place to face the knife. Initially, she did not want to be circumcised, but due to pressure from her already-circumcised peers in the village, she had to give in.
“In my Pokot community, there’s no way you would live as a girl or a woman without being circumcised, especially when all of your friends have been cut. My aunt was a big supporter of female genital mutilation. So I informed her that I wanted to be circumcised just like my friends and she supported me. Since my mother has never been a supporter of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), my aunt advised me to escape in the wee hours of the morning and run to her home, so that she could take me to the circumciser,” Sebei recalls.
Sebei was only 13 years old and in class 7 at the time. Her mother, a nurse by profession, is from the Tugen community, while her dad comes from the Pokot community in East Pokot where they live. Both communities practise FGM.
It was during the school holidays that she made arrangements with her aunt to undergo the cut. She did this without her mother’s consent. Her father supports the practise since he knew that the cut would guarantee that his daughters would automatically get married which would result in him getting 60 goats, 30 cows and 10 camels, as dowry according to the Pokot culture.
Sebei went ahead and bought a razor blade secretly and prepared herself that night. Her aunt advised her not to sneak out of home during the night, but to leave in the morning, while her mother was still asleep. According to the aunt’s advice, Sebei would already be cut by the time her mother woke up.
“I woke up quietly, tiptoed towards the door and then ran away. It was a distance of around 5 kilometers. Unfortunately, one of my sister’s high school friends saw me running. She went to our home and informed her that she saw me running and suspected that I was heading to be cut. My sister had already undergone the cut, and did not want me to undergo what she went through,” she said during the interview with The Star.
According to Sebei, the cutting ceremony usually starts very early in the morning. Girls rush to the river to bath first, then they run naked to the circumcision venue. She joined her peers at the river to bath. But on her way to the circumcision venue, she met with her elder sister.