[DanaC]

This made me smile a lot. These young lads are very impressive.

Long before the idea of ending female genital mutilation (FGM) was gaining traction among world leaders, a group of young Maasai men were already questioning the need for the brutal practice.

“Female genital mutilation is part of our culture and practice and it marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, of women from girls. We now realise FGM is one of the practices we should not have in our society. It’s not helping us but affecting our girls and mothers and wives,” says Sonyanga Ole Ngais, one of the stars of a new documentary that charts how a cricket team formed in the shadows of Mount Kenya helped change attitudes towards the practice.

Interspersed with shots of life at home as they prepare for the trip, their arrival in the UK, and their first visit to Lord’s, we hear the team talking about FGM and the lack of women’s rights in the region, views in stark contrast to those expressed by Maasai elders.

“It started a long time ago when we were young and our sisters were being married off and not completing school,” says Ngais, in London this week to promote the film.

“When I was young I remember very well my last sister to undergo the cut [FGM], and she was married off. I really liked her and was really sad and cried a lot when she was married off. She was like my mother, taking care of me … when she was married I realised I was not going to have that company. I was not going to see her.”

Ngais, 26, had already seen three other sisters undergo FGM, drop out of school and marry young; culture dictates that girls should be cut before they are married. FGM has been banned in Kenya for years.

The pain of losing his sister to marriage never left him. And as Ngais grew older and came to understand more about what girls went through, he began to question the importance of FGM in the Maasai culture, and started talking to his friends about it.

“When I grew up I started to realise what these people were doing … it was not nice, it was inhuman.”

By this time, he had a younger sister, Eunice. He was determined that she would not be cut.

“I realised I was not ready to lose another sister,” Ngais said. “I had the passion to fight for women’s rights in our society.

“We have to realise girls have their rights and need to study. They don’t need the brutality of FGM.”

These young men, having left their communities, travelled and therefore gained wisdom, were given a hearing by their elders. They were asked whether they would marry a girl who had not been cut. Their response was tovow only tomarry girls who had not been cut. Since the parents of girls want most for them to be married - the most eligible and celebrated bachelors of their community refusing to marry girls who have been cut carries serious weight.

Read the rest here:

http://www.theguardian.com/global-de...s-championship