The 'girl' who evaded FGM and built a safe house for victims

It is befitting that Nice Nailantei Retiti Leng'ete was auspiciously named Retiti, a Maasai word for fig tree. The tree would save her life when she repeatedly evaded female genital mutilation (FGM). In her memoir, The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How I Fought to Save Myself, My Sister and Thousands of Girls Worldwide, her anti-FGM conscientiousness is radiantly displayed as a gold-standard for the campaign against retrogressive practices.

Nice grew up in Noomayianat, a picturesque Maasai village near the town of Kimana, close to the Kenya-Tanzania border. Kilimanjaro appears in the horizon, boosting its ambience. It's an area where elephants, wildebeests and giraffes graze, while hyenas and lions hunt.

Among the Maasai, a woman is charged with the responsibility of observing her daughter. As a girl grows up and her breasts begin to bud, her mother informs her father that she is ready for circumcision. He arranges a ceremony. The community performs the ritual in April and December, during the rainy seasons.

When Nice was three, her mother, Alice Mantole, brought her along to a ceremony where a 14-year-old girl was undergoing genital mutilation. A circumciser continuously pulled the teenager’s clitoris and repeatedly cut it with a razor. The girl clenched her teeth in excruciation as blood gushed and dripped down the circumciser’s wrists.

The teenager shivered, but her mother held her tightly. Other women then helped her to her feet. She staggered into a house and collapsed on a straw mat, screaming as she convulsed. A few days later, the girl developed a fever and died. Over the next few years, Nice witnessed over 10 FGM ceremonies, which left a traumatic scar on her conscience.

When Nice was 7, her younger brother drowned as he crossed a river while herding cattle. Shortly after, her father, Paul Leng’ete ole Nangoro, grew extremely skinny and passed away, as did her mother.

Also read: Let's join hands to protect girls from FGM

After both parents died, the community raised over Sh1.5 million for their upkeep. Nice and her older sister, Soila, were eager to join boarding school. Nice approached her uncle, who had been tasked to administer the funds, and requested fees. He dismissed her.

Nice and Soila then began doing odd jobs to raise her fees. Nice eventually joined boarding school. But when she returned home for her holiday, the uncle led Soila and her to their grandfather’s house, demanding that they undergo mutilation.

Nice was only 8, just about to turn 9, but her uncle was eager to profit from them as FGM would make them ready for marriage. He had set his sights on their bride prices. He had three daughters, so he reckoned that one ceremony for the five girls would suffice, a profitable move.

Nice dissuaded Soila and they escaped from her uncle’s house at dawn, on the day of the ceremony. They climbed up a retiti tree outside her uncle’s mud house and hid. After sunrise, they ran for 15 kilometres through hyena-infested bushes to their aunt’s home. The aunt, Grace, sheltered them, but two days later, they were tracked down, rebuked and marched back to their uncle’s house.

The following dawn, Nice escaped again after an unsuccessful attempt to convince Soila to join her. This time she ran to her boarding school teacher, Caroline, who hid her.

While in high school and working for Amref, Nice would learn that the effects of FGM were worse than she had imagined. The practice could cause cysts, abscesses, urinary incontinence, and chronic pain during sex. Complications from repeat infections could also cause infertility and birth complications.

Unmutilated women are vilified by the community. Having avoided the cut, Nice was excoriated and labelled as entapai, a derogatory word for a girl who has ‘shamed’ her family. Besides Soila, who had been coerced into FGM and had three children by the time she was 16, all of Nice's relatives stopped speaking to her.

During school breaks, she pleaded with her grandfather to spare her. She then began a campaign to convince other girls to avoid mutilation. She would hide them in Grace's house.

As part of her campaign against the vice, Nice, in her adulthood, built a rescue centre and leadership academy, a safe haven with the needed infrastructural ingredients to provide thousands of rescued girls with requisite services, including education.

The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Center (@jeffbigbrother).