Traditional circumcisers storm Bomet initiation camp, 'curse' medics over attrition of culture

Traditional circumcision, where boys face the crude knife without the benefit of anaesthesia, remains the oldest and most common rite of passage among many Kenyan communities.

But the fact that some locals in Bomet County have resorted to medical doctors for more sanitized circumcision — for fear of HIV/aids and other deadly infections — has thrown traditional circumcisers in the locale in panic mode.

So much that two veteran traditional circumcisers, Musa Biwott and Arap Chepkwony, recently expressed their displeasure in style by storming a circumcision camp in Kapkoros area to vent. They read the presiding medics and religious leaders the riot act, accusing them of attrition of the community’s rich culture and untimely ending their illustrious careers of turning boys into men.

Mumbling gibbesrish

“The angry elderly men mumbled gibberish and chanted incantation in a bid to curse the medics and men of God for weakening and wearing way an important cultural aspect of the Kalenjin community,” said Albert Sigei, a local who witnessed the drama.

Accusing the medics and religious leaders of malice and disdain for culture, the two old men ranted and raved, threatening them with dire consequences from ancestors. After being thrown out of the camp, they went on to vent their frustrations to shocked locals outside, narrating how they have been turned away from several homes at a time when he expects booming business of circumcising boys.

“Being the period of the year when boys go for circumcision, we have been expecting invitations from prospective clients. But this has not been the case. Many homes have been sending us away, claiming their boys have been taken to the camp where doctors are carrying out the all-important cut. Some are even calling our job primitive,” a furious Biwott is quoted as having complained.

Thanks to modernization and fear of deadly infections, many would-be clients to traditional circumcisers have instead turned to professional medics to perform the minor surgery. “I have performed the cut on almost every man in this village, so why are people all of a sudden claiming that they want their children initiated within a religious context and in sanitised environment?” An enraged Biwott was reportedly heard yelling.

According to Charles Lang’at, one of the clerics who was presiding over the initiation ceremony at the camp, the idea of shunning a traditional circumcisers was informed by the need to have a safe surgical procedure. “In this age and time when HIV and other STI’s are rife and rampant, nobody would want to take chances with the health of the boys. Furthermore, their parents had paid and precisely specified that the procedure, be done medically,” he said.

Some older folks underwent the cut courtesy of Biwott welcomed the riddance of his services. Some described the cut of old as brutal and the pain excruciatingly unbearable since it had no anaesthesia. Langa’t maintained that in this era of technological innovation, civilisation and push for education, there was no room for unnecessary strange beliefs and backward practices.