By Joseph Ngugi in London

Circumcision marks the transition from childhood into adulthood - at least traditionally.

Some communities in Kenya still circumcise boys above ten years old and teach them tenets of their community.

During recuperation, the boys were taught tribal values and secrets as well as warfare and peace negotiations.

But modernity has changed this sole purpose of circumcision and the age has been lowered to just eight days for some people, including Kenyans living in the Diaspora.

Monica Wairimu Kung’u who lives in the UK recently had her son, Ryan Munene, five, circumcised in London. He was not happy after the operation.

Amid sobs and whining, he angrily turned to his mother who had accompanied him to the circumciser and asked: "Why cut my skin. I didn’t have a problem with it. Why didn’t you have yours cut, if you think it is funny?"

When I posted the encounter on my Facebook wall recently, I received many comments.

One contributor responded: "Is the cut necessary? And if so, should we not wait for an age when the boy can make a choice? If it’s not okay for girls to get the cut, why is it okay for little boys? Personally, I think it’s simply male genital mutilation."

Another contributor wrote: "The mum should have waited until the boy is around 14. They understand better at that age — about the cut."

The arguments raged, but in the UK, no doctor will circumcise an older boy, unless it is in an emergency medical procedure.

Heal faster

Chairman of the Kenya Movement for Democracy and Justice Ng’ethe wa Mbiyu who, years back, had his son circumcised at 13 years, says parents are taking little boys for the cut for fear that their sons might reject circumcision in a society that majority of men are not cut.

Wairimu believes having the operation at that tender age was the most appropriate.

The boy would heal faster and also escape from peer pressure and media misinformation.

She says her best friend’s son, who is now 19, refused to be circumcised and even went ahead to seek the intervention of social services’ child protection unit, police and teachers when his parents attempted to spirit him to Kenya for the ritual he didn’t understand or consent to.

The boy said his parents wanted to have his ‘willie’ cut off. "That’s what they do in Africa," he said, making the social services to ban his parents from ever taking him to Kenya or interfere with his genitalia in any way.

When the family recently got another baby boy, the mother insisted that he be circumcised before his umbilical cord was severed.

She told the midwives and surgeon on duty that she couldn’t want another son to shun circumcision when he grows older. The mother got her way.

With strict adherence to child and individual’s rights here in the UK, many parents fear that if they don’t have their infant male children cut, the practice will die as the new generation of male knife-shy offspring keep away from the circumciser.

Njoki Gakuru from South London, whose five-year-old son had the cut three weeks ago, says she did it for her son so he could cope with the pain, because the younger the quicker the recovery.

Gacheru Waire from Coventry, Midlands, however, says that his seven-year-old son will get circumcised at the age of 15 or above, together with his cousins back in Kenya, so that all the boys could get properly inducted into Kikuyu customs, just like the other generations before them.

Waire argues that by having the boy cut at that very early age, the knife trauma could inhibit the proper development of the male reproductive organs.

Some medics, however, say the pain of circumcision is more traumatic for a much older boy than infants.

Child cruelty

For those parents living in the West, the practice of boy-child circumcision is, therefore, primarily for meaningless cultural continuity.

No wonder the practice is now mostly carried out only by some Africans, Jews and Muslims.

Noticeable is the fact that even among the Orthodox Jews, circumcision is becoming more and more unpopular especially among the educated.

Most whites, people from the Caribbean and many other communities outside the Middle East and the Muslim Asia just don’t bother.

A friend from the Caribbean once barked when I asked him if he was circumcised, "I will kill a few people before they do that to me. I will go back up to my maker the way He sent me down here!"

The cut has faced some serious and noticeable opposition from medics and civil rights activists in Europe and North America too.

Opponents argue that every human being should have a right to make decisions that affect their lives, not to be subjected to traditions they don’t understand.

Other opponents argue that parents and doctors circumcising infants should be arrested and charged with child cruelty.

Earlier this year, in Dallas, America, police arrested and charged a father with child abuse for apparently circumcising his two infant sons at his home with a kitchen knife.

Johnny Eric Marlowe, 32, had circumcised his boys when they were just eight days old. He was jailed for 150 days for child cruelty.

And in March 2008, the Times of London had described the circumcision of infant males in Britain as barbaric, mutilation and child abuse.