Circumcision in The Agikuyu Community

My term paper is based upon the traditional and modern ways in which the Agikuyu community has continued to practice circumcision in their society. In my paper I will discuss both the female and male circumcision and what effects it has had to the community over the years. I will discuss what has changed and what is continuing to change and the intervention of the government and society at large.

INTRODUCTION

It is thought that the system of circumcision was borrowed from Cushitic and Nilotic peoples by the early Thagicu, one of the ancestral groups of the Kikuyu (and possibly the tenth of the 'full nine' clans mentioned in oral tradition). From these we note that circumcision was adopted some five centuries ago( Gollaher,2000). Before then, one presumes that it did not feature in proto-Kikuyu life.

Of all the Kikuyu life stages, circumcision (irua) was and remains by far the most important, signifying not only a child's passage into adulthood, but a whole wealth of other socially significant meanings and assumptions of responsibility.

For both boys and girls, initiation into adulthood - through circumcision or clitoridectomy - marks their admission into full membership of Kikuyu society, and was thus a momentous occasion, both socially and individually. Through circumcision and the period of initiation and instruction that accompanied it, an individual became a full participant in society as a whole, beyond the scope of the village (itura) and their families. Their responsibilities, therefore, extended not just to their family group, but to the Kikuyu as a nation.

On the most basic level, the social consequence of a boy's circumcision meant that he would now become a warrior, and would spend several years in the servic...

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...ime when initiates are instructed in the rules and regulations of their society, and their responsibilities within it.

Christian missionaries and other Westerners have invariably looked down on circumcision, of both men and women but especially of women, as being repugnant. Given the Christian belief that the body is the temple of God, this apparent act of mutilation was seen - and still is seen - as sacrilege. And thus, with their typical open-mindedness, the ceremonies that surrounded circumcision were condemned by the missionaries to be heathen and anti-Christian (Strayer,Murray,1978).

It was not so much the cutting of the clitoris that outraged them, but the excision of the labia and other parts which were prevalent before colonization, and which were viewed as being abhorrent and barbaric in the extreme, and as an unwarranted mutilation of a woman's body.