The mothers who said no: How two girls escaped FGM with their parents’ help
Elema Otieno, famously known by many as ‘Elema Nyar Marsabit’ was protected from undergoing FGM by her mother. The mother of two and a trained primary education teacher is now advocating against teenage pregnancy in Marsabit County.
What you need to know:
- Nationally, FGM occurrence has declined steadily over more than two decades. Data from successive Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys shows that the percentage of women aged 15 to 49 who have undergone FGM has fallen from about 38 per cent in the late 1990s to approximately 15 per cent in 2022.
Elema Otieno still remembers the taunts. "You know, your clitoris will elongate and start sweeping the floor. Do you want to be a man, to have a hard thing between your legs?" Older women would tell her, mimicking the terrifying stories meant to pressure her into undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
For young girls growing up in Marsabit County when Elema was a child, FGM was as expected as Christmas in December or New Year in January. It was simply what happened. But Elema's mother held a different view—one that would spare her daughter from a practice that was considered normal at the time.
“For us young girls, the way people associate December with Christmas and January with New Year—that's how familiar FGM was to us. Luckily, I was raised by my mum primarily, who did not hold a lot of traditions at heart. So I got to remove my headscarf quite early in my life, which is not a thing for a Marsabit woman," says Elema, now famously known as Elema Nyar Marsabit because of her advocacy to end teenage pregnancies in the county.
While Elema felt comfortable and at peace listening to her mother's voice at home, outside the house was a different story. The community was deeply cultural, making her completion of primary education before undergoing the cut a rare case at the time.
"I lived through challenges during my primary school. It was not easy because I used to get bullied a lot and talked about," she recalls.
While Elema doesn't recall having a candid conversation about FGM with her mother, or even her mother explicitly warning her not to undergo it, she remembers how adamant her mother's stand was — that this was a harsh, painful culture no girl should go through.
However, this didn't stop the conversations around her not having undergone FGM, especially considering the ceremonies that were being held in homesteads after every FGM season. FGM ceremonies often culminated in a gathering where families would enjoy a meal, with rice a constant favourite.
"My rice was never eaten for a very long time. They waited and waited and waited, but it never happened. During my primary and secondary school life, other girls used to bully me as an uncircumcised girl and we would fight and quarrel over it many times."
The boarding school pressure
After joining high school, Elema says the boarding school environment made things worse, making her think of undergoing the cut to avoid the humiliation.
"I remember in Form One when I came back during the first-term holiday, I was really ready to bow down to the pressure. I had moved from a day school where in the evening I would go home, to a boarding school where I would hear things about me being uncircumcised all through. It was a lot for me."
But the fear of pain, and one woman's mocking comment about her waiting until she was grown, made her shy away.
"Let me go cut this thing. In fact, it is so overgrown, I am not sure if the razor blade will cut it," the woman had said. That scared her enough to back down.
She resigned herself to living with the ridicule for the rest of her life. But the pressure would resurface at an unexpected moment—when she was delivering her first-born baby.
"Immediately after high school, I got pregnant, and there is nothing much you can do as a young girl when you get pregnant in my community. My only next step was to get married to the man responsible for the pregnancy."
Getting married meant moving far away from Marsabit town to the village, where most childbirths were done by traditional birth attendants.
One day, her mother-in-law called one of the traditional birth attendants to check the condition of the foetus in her womb. It was during this visit that she got the shock of her life when one of her high school classmates, who knew she had not undergone the cut, revealed this to the midwife.
“The traditional birth attendant said I was not yet a woman because I was not circumcised, so before the baby could come out, she would have to cut me first during the labour pains. I panicked. My antennae went up and I told myself: I did not endure eight years of primary and four years of secondary school, suffering ridicule the entire time, only to be circumcised now at my most vulnerable moment."
Knowing that her only way to escape the cultural cut was to avoid it entirely, she opted for hospital delivery with the support of her mother, who requested that she be allowed back to Marsabit town where access to hospital was easier compared to the village.
"There were no cars, so I took the next available vehicle, which was a lorry. I feared spending another night in the same village for fear of the women coming to circumcise me at my house at night upon learning of my intention to deliver at a hospital. The then eight-months-pregnant me boarded a lorry and went home to my mother. When I was due,
I went and delivered at the current Marsabit Referral Hospital with my body organs intact. That is how I escaped FGM again during that childbirth," says the mother of two aged 10 and one.
Escaping violence
But that wasn't the end of her troubles. When Elema went back to the village with her one-month-old baby, her husband became violent. She was barely 18.
"Before I left the marriage, I bleached to become yellowish and attractive to my husband, but still nothing changed. He continued being violent to me. I was very malnourished when I left my marriage. I had lost a lot of weight and I was self-isolating."
When the baby was 10 months old, she walked out of the marriage and went back to her mother, who received her with open arms. Today, Elema is using her life experience to champion against teenage pregnancies in her Marsabit community.
“I did not stay with my mother for long. She enrolled me in college and took care of my baby while I studied. I pursued primary teacher education and became a teacher. While in college, I also participated in a modelling competition. Today, I am happy seeing my daughter grow up uncircumcised, just as I was. She looks up to me as she proceeds with her studies, and I am so grateful for that; it would not have been possible had I remained in that abusive marriage," says the Mrs Universe Kenya-Marsabit County 2022.
The grandmother who was a circumciser
In Meru County, we meet Edina Kathomi, who is preparing for her exams on a Wednesday morning. The First-Year student at Meru Polytechnic is pursuing a diploma in ICT, a step she believes she would not have made had her mother not protected her from undergoing FGM, which was very common in her community and denied women like her mother and grandmother a chance to pursue formal education.
Edina Kathomi, a First-Year student pursuing a diploma in ICT at Meru Polytechnic. Her mother protected her from the practice.
"The first time I heard about FGM as a cultural practice, I was very young, like five years old. In our village, back then, my grandma was a circumciser. So I heard people talking about her, then I asked what FGM is and how it was done."
Learning about the practice, and that people close to her were the performers of it, put a lot of fear in her life as she kept growing.
"Years that followed, I became curious about not having undergone FGM because in my mind, I was thinking, what if maybe they are lying to me and maybe at night when I go to sleep, they come and cut me?"
Edina then started the conversation with her mother, who assured her that she was safe and would not let her go through the act as it was a culture that used to be practised in the past but not anymore.
"I feel that my mum loves me more than she loves herself because I am the only daughter in our family and she protected me as a way of showing her love."
As she grew older, awareness about the harmful impacts of FGM on women's health increased within her community. Every holiday, she attended awareness forums with her age-mates, and this made them more confident, knowing that the cultural practice was against their rights. They had power in their hands and minds, they were ready to defend themselves as young girls.
“I don't think my mum would have undergone the cut if she had been born in my generation, because she would have received training in school. In my view, FGM is a bad thing.
From the stories I have read, some girls did not want to be circumcised but their parents forced them. They tried to escape but were still being forced. Once you realize you are being forced to do something, it means that thing is not good.”
What strategy does she believe worked in her favour?
“From Class Five through to Form Four, I was in boarding school, but that was not the reason I did not undergo FGM. It was entirely because my mother created a conducive environment for me to learn, just like other students. I believe I did not undergo the cut because my parents did not support FGM. They simply encouraged me to focus on my education.”
Edina takes pride in the institutions creating awareness to end FGM across the country. When she sees the majority of her peers talking boldly about not having undergone FGM, she believes the campaigns are working.
"One thing I am proud of is that I have not undergone FGM. My parents still educate me and they have been so supportive. They also tell me that marriage will come at the right time, but I have to first study," says Edina, who sat her KCSE exams in 2024.
The former circumciser speaks
According to Edina's mother, Monica Ncugu, protecting her daughter from undergoing FGM was not a walk in the park. It came with a lot of challenges.
"When I said that my only daughter would not undergo FGM, I was told to let her be circumcised so that she can learn well and be fit. But I refused because I had been trained on why FGM is bad."
The mother of four recalls her younger years when the tradition was very common, and how she missed so many opportunities after undergoing the cut at age 10 and being married off soon after. She says she later found herself also performing the cut and has lost count of how many young girls passed through her hands as she wielded the razor blade.
"When I got married, my mother-in-law, who was circumcising girls, taught me how to do it. I did that many times and every cut would earn me not less than Sh1,000. Now we have undergone the training with my mother-in-law and none of us does it. Nowadays I don't get money, but I made a promise never to do it again." What gives her joy is seeing her daughter's life being completely different from hers just because she was not circumcised. She describes her as a well-disciplined girl who is going on with her higher education, unlike her, who did not complete her primary education.
"We underwent training and all the girls in this village refused to undergo FGM completely because they were trained and understood the risks. They go to seminars just as I do, and return to the village to train other community members that FGM is not good."
While Monica's life has become difficult, having lost her source of income and with ongoing drought making it impossible for her to get enough harvests of crops from her maize and vegetable farms, she is hopeful that she will get a source of livelihood to support her young and still-growing family.
"I am fortunate that my daughter came as my third-born. She is a miracle because if she had been my first or second child, who, luckily, were boys, we would not be having this conversation today. I have broken a generational cycle of FGM in my lineage. My mother was circumcised and she ensured I underwent the same cultural process, but I decided it would not happen to my daughter because I had received training."
The statistics point to possibility
When examined carefully, the data presents a compelling case that ending FGM by 2030 is not only possible but statistically practical, provided progress in high-prevalence counties such as Tharaka Nithi is accelerated and sustained. This is according to Tharaka Nithi County woman representative aspirant Anita Mbae.
Tharaka Nithi County woman representative aspirant Anita Mbae. She believes that the probability of ending FGM by 2030 depends on the rate of decline, age-cohort replacement, and geographic concentration.
"Nationally, FGM occurrence has declined steadily over more than two decades. Data from successive Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys shows that the percentage of women aged 15 to 49 who have undergone FGM has fallen from about 38 per cent in the late 1990s to approximately 15 per cent in 2022. This represents a reduction of more than half within one generation, a rate of decline that is rare for deeply entrenched cultural practices."
She adds that from a demographic standpoint, that decline matters immensely, especially considering that younger cohorts show significantly lower prevalence than older ones, causing the overall national rate to continue to fall even without dramatic interventions.
"The probability of ending FGM by 2030, therefore, depends on three measurable factors: the rate of decline, age-cohort replacement, and geographic concentration. Kenya's recent decline of roughly one percentage point per year, combined with very low prevalence among adolescents, places the country on a credible elimination trajectory.
For Tharaka Nithi, accelerating this decline among younger girls is decisive. If current trends hold and are intensified, the county could move from above-average prevalence to near-zero within a decade."
The founder of Anita Mbae Foundation, which also champions girls' rights to education, adds that Kenya as a country has already achieved what once seemed impossible: a generational collapse in FGM prevalence. But she also believes there is still much work to be done within the less than four years remaining.
"Ending FGM by 2030 is not guaranteed. The statistics also warn against complacency. Risks such as under-reporting, clandestine cutting, and medicalisation could slow progress if left unchecked. In some communities, enforcement without parallel community engagement can drive the practice underground rather than eliminate it. These risks are not hypothetical; they appear consistently in data from other countries that have attempted rapid elimination. Yet even with these challenges, the long-term trend in
Kenya remains downward."
