YOU ARE NOW A “WOMAN”
Its 8.00 a.m in Los Angeles. A young girl rolls up her yoga mat and walks out of the Planet yoga studio into the LA sun.The yoga session was just as she likes it,brief and invigorating.She’s headed for Froyo her blond hair glistening in the morning sun. It’s good day, she thinks to her self. At Planet Yogurt she takes a selfie, posted it on her Instagram page with the caption Sunny and froyo
She has to catch the train from Queens to Manhattan.She is a comedian and today is her first stand up comedy gig at Lasos. She must impress the crowd in order to get a permanent spot .Comedy is her therapy. It’s a means in which she not only expresses her self but also unwinds. Her parents, especially her dad is super proud of her, I mean how many 13 year olds do you know who have their own slots at a comedy bar?
Its a chilly morning in Pokot. A group of girls aged 12–13 years are huddled in one small hut.They are getting prepared for their initiation ceremony. A lot has been whispered into their ears, “Its a good thing and you will end up with a “good man”. This is a token. Come to think of it,they are lucky. It’s not everyday a young girl gets to marry an old shriveled man with five wives ,hundreds of children and a herd of cattle in the boma. He is a ‘good man’, I tell you.
In the next hut, an old man wrapped in a shuka sits humming silently as he sharpens a knife.The knife that will aid in this transitory period. The knife that will automatically change their lives.
The ceremony which entails a cutting off the young and innocent parts of the girls genitalia will take place.Later on she will be married off, as tradition demands.
If only tradition demanded consent, If only tradition inquired on the girls well being, If only tradition thought of the girls and their future.
But it doesn't and the girls are now “women”