’Female genital mutilation? I use the word killer’: Maasai speak out – video | Global development | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2015/nov/12/warriors-movie-maasai-cricket-female-genital-mutilation-killer-video
For years, young Maasai men watched in appalled silence as their sisters and mothers were subjected to female genital mutilation, a practice deeply embedded in their culture. Then they took up cricket, attracting the attention of the wider world and acquiring a voice they had previously lacked. Emboldened to raise the issue with their elders, the men – whose journey from the plains of Kenya to the hallowed turf of London’s Lord’s cricket ground is documented in a new film – became a conduit for the voices of Maasai women
#femmes #mutilations_génitales merci @reka
Maasai Cricket Warriors determined to hit female genital mutilation for six
▻http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/nov/12/maasai-cricket-warriors-female-genital-mutilation-movie-last-man-stands
As Ngais’ passion for women’s rights grew, a new sport was introduced to him and his friends by Aliya Bauer, a South African woman conducting research in the area who was missing the sport she loved. She brought over some equipment from South Africa and began teaching the locals to play.
In 2009, the Warriors team was formed and the novelty of the Maasai taking up the game soon attracted media attention. The team was invited to Cape Town for the Last Man Stands championship in 2012, before heading to London the following year with a film crew in tow.
The team used their growing popularity to talk about ending FGM.
A Maasai saying – “The eye that leaves the village sees further” – rang true on their return. In the eyes of their elders, the young men’s travels had earned them the right to a hearing. The elders ask the younger men whether they would want to marry women who had not undergone FGM. They replied by promising to marry only women who had not been cut.
“Parents don’t want their girls to stay with them [at home] so they have not forced them to have the cut,” says Ngais, who knows there is still some way to go before FGM is completely abolished in the region.
Ngais, who captains the Warriors, didn’t get the chance to play in the finals at Lord’s, and had to settle instead for practice sessions on its nursery ground. But by enlisting his two older brothers in the fight against FGM, and petitioning his parents, his sister Eunice and his nieces have not been cut. Eunice is now at secondary school. A women’s cricket team – the Maasai Cricket Ladies – is also proving popular in the area.
