Transformation and ritual efficacy in initiation ceremonies
In order to mimic traditional practices, as ARP purports to do, one first needs to know something about them. Yet thick description of these practices is almost completely absent from the FGM/C literature.
1 Anthropologist Jean Brown Sassoon has written about FGM/C among the Pokot, but not published on this. Pers. communication (in person). Corinne Kratz, in her magnificent ethnographic study of girls’ initiation in the indigenous Okiek community, has provided one of the most detailed descriptions of the ritual efficacy of female initiation in an age-organised society in Kenya (Kratz 1994/2010). While ethnographic studies exist of girls’ initiation in other Kenyan communities, they tend to lack rich detail of ritual, hence I will draw largely on Kratz’s work. However, she carried out her fieldwork in the mid-1970s and from 1982–94; many girls’ ceremonies no longer take place since FGM/C was outlawed. Nonetheless, her analysis still has value since it is a rare account of what exactly happens in female initiation rituals, and why they are transformative. Kratz gives many examples of ritual that has a functional and transformational value. She regards these ceremonies as complex multimedia cultural performances, and asks this fundamental question: ‘Just how do people accomplish what they say they do through ceremonies?’ (Kratz 2010:15). The same question ought to be asked of ARP.
Kratz argues that transformation from girlhood to womanhood comes about, in Okiek traditional initiation practices, through a series of rituals that involve intense emotional engagement – not only involving the girls, but also parents, siblings, and other members of the community. Girls are ‘led through the culturally defined sequence’ of rituals, which culminate in a final ceremony. Kratz details how exactly the ‘symbolic associations of signs’ work with one another, in specific contexts, to produce socio-cultural meaning. She emphasises the roles that parents and other key actors play in these processes, which contrasts sharply with ARP, where (from observation) parents tend to be relegated to onlookers.
Kratz emphasises the importance of collectively ‘getting worked up’ for ritual efficacy. This is crucial to the ceremonial experience as well as societal transformation. Ethnographer Paul Spencer also emphasised the importance of emotional ‘build-up’, climax, and ‘climb-down’ in Maasai graduation ceremonies. Although he only discussed male ceremonies, he noted how women were central to these as wives, mothers, and daughters (Spencer 1993:146–9). There is certainly plenty of emotion and excitement in ARP, but is that transformative? It surely has more to do with little girls having fun with their pals, meeting boys, and escaping the restrictions of home. I have yet to see any hard evidence that the ceremonies have any truly transformative function.
What has happened to these Okiek rituals since FGM/C was outlawed? Some Okiek continue to practise the cut clandestinely, but many reportedly respect the ban.
2 Pers. communication with Corinne Kratz by email in April and June 2022, and August 2023.The importance of status, and age-sets
When interviewing FGM/C-practising women, and asking them why they like the practice, they invariably refer immediately to culture, but do not distinguish between that and tradition. (Kratz [1993] provides a useful discussion of people’s notions of tradition.) The Maa word I and my field assistants
3 My assistant/translator was Grace Salau, my hostess’s daughter. We held an all-day focus group discussion in a village in Engorika Location, Kajiado Central, on 31 March 2015. I will not name the village, or give the full names of the participants, to protect their identities. They belonged to the Il-Kankere section, also known as Il-Dalalekutuk. used when researching in Maasai communities, and which informants also used, was
or-kuak, but that is not ideal or exact.
4 Ol-kuak, pl. il-kuaki. Character, behaviour, one’s way of doing things (Mol 1996:211). A typical response came from Mary, a mother of three in her sixties, when asked why she was in favour of FGM/C: ‘It’s our culture (
or-kuak). It was there [in the old days] and it’s still there.’ Other informants, at this research site and others, similarly said that Maasai have always done it; they saw no reason to stop practising what their forebears did. ‘
Or-kuak was the way of life of the forefathers’, said Esther, a forty-something mother of five. I pointed out to this focus group that many other cultural practices, such as lion killing, cattle raiding, avoidance of agriculture, cutting ear lobes, eating traditional foods, warriorhood, and traditional religious belief, have also changed in recent years, if not been entirely swept away, yet Maasai remain culturally Maasai. So, what is so special about keeping FGM/C (
e-murata)?
5 E-murata, pl. i-murat, i-muratat. The same word is also used to refer to boys’ circumcision (Mol 1996:264). Esther replied:
The difference between FGM and the other practices: some of them are hard practices, such as putting on skin [clothes made from animal hides], it was only that the Maasai never had an option [before]. You had to slaughter a goat, and it would take a long time to dry and take the hair off [to make clothes]. Whereas now we can buy a
shuka [cloth garment] and it has no difficulties. That one made it so easy, and we could change [our practices] so quickly … FGM is very strong because it entails rituals. And the girls also love it because one, it’s a promotion stage, and two, it’s the first time in life when girls are treated very special – with your own specific food and three months of rest. It’s a very special time when all the attention is on
you. [Her emphasis.] The only other time you are treated special is when you give birth.
6 Esther was in her forties, married with five children, the wife of a Pentecostal pastor. Like other women in this FGD, she described herself as a home manager, which includes caring for livestock.The women in this group described how cutting their daughters confers higher status on mothers; this is why they like it and want to keep doing it. ‘It’s a graduation ceremony for the girl and also for the parents, because they are on another level’, said Esther:
Because the time when they are choosing the council of elders, you are now qualified to become a member of the council once your daughter is circumcised. You go through this [initiation] so there is no difference between the parents with daughters and those with sons. And it is a [source of] pride for the parents. In such a way, parents with a son or a daughter [come] to be on the same level.
These answers suggest that one main reason why people in age-organised societies cling to FGM/C when all these other practices have ended is this: none of the other practices or behaviours (apart from warriorhood) involve social transformation and upgrading to a higher state of personhood. Although women do not belong to age-sets, other than through their husbands, they can be upgraded too, via age-related rites of passage that mirror those of boys and men. As Agnes (forty-five) said:
The moment we lose age-sets, which are already going, we lose everything to do with the Maasai. Later this year we have a big church meeting to which everyone will go and pray God to help the community. We are thinking, how can we help our community to keep age-sets? Because they really help the Maasai … If we lose them, and
shukas and beads, we are done. There will be nothing to show we are Maasai anymore.
7 Agnes described herself as a children’s rights activist. Mother of five, wife of a Pentecostal pastor.So, in mirroring male age-sets, girls and women are not only ritually united with their peers (male and female) but also enter into important reciprocal relationships within their lineage, clan, section, and community. Yet the organisers of ARP appear to pay no attention to this.
More views from the ground
My fieldwork host, who held the focus group in her home, had taken part in a pro-FGM/C street protest in June 2014 at Engorika trading centre, Kajiado Central. Other women in the group had also protested that day; I sought their views for that reason. The protest made headlines in Kenya when journalists and film crews were physically attacked.
8 The protest received extensive media coverage, e.g. No byline (2014), ‘Journalists attacked by pro-FGM Maasai women in Kajiado’, Kajiado County News, Kenya, 1 July. https://kajiadocountynews.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/three-journalists-attacked-by-pro-fgm-demonstrators-in-kajiado/ [Accessed 11 July 2025]. However, not everyone in the focus group was pro-FGM/C; even those who were said they felt it would eventually end.
None of these women had heard of ARP. When I described it to them, they loudly chorused: ‘It’s just lying, it’s just cheating! That’s a waste of time. We are not for it.’
In a different part of Maasailand, Lemek in Narok County, another Maasai informant voiced a similar opinion. Eliza was in her seventies, a widow with seven children and forty grandchildren. She, too, had never heard of ARP. When I described it, she was alarmed:
It is like they are cheating! They are not showing the girls the right way. I don’t agree at all with that. To me, when my daughter has refused the cut it’s not a must she goes to the government and the chiefs and says: ‘I am now grown up.’ She can stay at my home and I can teach her. I don’t want my girl to go to ceremonies like that one, with the NGOs.
I don’t want that gathering of the government.
[Her emphasis.]
I don’t want the government to go and tell my girl she is a woman. I don’t want people around to know. I’d want to teach her myself. If she refused [FGM/C] I would respect that, but … [I wouldn’t allow her to go for ARP].
9 Interview with Purko Maasai housewife, Lemek, 18 April 2015. Field assistant Jackie Nchoe.It is significant that she saw this as something the government was doing, although I had not mentioned government. It remains the perception, in historically marginalised communities that have experienced generations of land and other types of loss, that all social interventions must be government-led.