One of my many role-models was Philip Ochieng, a writer who could pick a single English word and write a 600-word article around it.
Take the word circumcision, for example. Mr Ochieng would have traced its Latin origins to a thousand years before Christ, thrown in an interjection that Christ was not a Christian, then explained that circumcise comes from two words: circum, meaning around, and cise, meaning cut.
Ochieng would probably point out that to circumcise a man means to ‘cut’ the skin ‘around’ the tip of his penis for health, religious, or cultural reasons. He would probably throw in some banter about how communities that do not take trips around that particular part of the anatomy with a knife or razor have their own, equally effective ways of initiating their boys into manhood.
He would probably poke fun at the idea that merely slicing off a piece of skin from a boy’s penis makes him a man, and point out that even in the Bible, Christianity’s holiest book, Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews, was circumcised at the age of 99, alongside his 13-year-old son.
Father and son were circumcised the same season.
Now, December is circumcision season for many boys in Kenya. And in some regions, particularly in Mt Kenya and Nairobi, the price tag of manhood has been growing steadily over the years. Today, some of the amounts parents are being asked to pay for their boys to become men would shock the ancestors of the region.
They would probably wonder whether today's circumcisers use something else to circumcise boys, such as power saws and laser beams, and easily conclude that a good number of today's circumcision ceremonies, especially in the Mt Kenya region, are a scam.
It gets worse when the ceremonies are conducted by fellows with a warped perception of manhood – fellows who best represent the scoundrels the Good Lord threatened to put a millstone around their necks for misleading innocent boys.
Let us be clear here: Any circumcision that teaches boys that women are lesser beings than men, or that violence and sex are marks of manhood, is not circumcision but circumlocution – talking around the issue.
And in a country such as ours where everything, including the definition of manhood, is politicised, any circumcision that teaches our boys that people who have not been circumcised in the same way they have are lesser beings ought to be banned under our laws on national cohesion.
A circumcision that teaches boys that culture means going back to the Stone Age and generally starting a 'cultural rebellion' back home ought to be banned, if for nothing else, then for reversing our train to Singapore.
Perhaps we need to start by 'de-circumcising' a good number of the fellows running today's circumcision camps – or 'boys' initiation camps', whatever you call them. With their warped definitions of manhood, they end up turning the innocent minds of young boys against their own mothers inside some of these 'initiation camps'. These camps, besides being seasonal money-minting machines, are also veritable rebel-training grounds for our boys.
Still, we need new generations of men out there, so we must continue to initiate our boys into manhood the best way we know how – whether by removing a piece of skin or a tooth, or branding a tattoo on their foreheads, whichever. We also need to teach them what our culture means, because without culture, a man is a shadow wandering on his own.
But let us do this while teaching them that circumcision does not make a man; character does.
Let us circumcise their minds first – their attitudes towards life and everything in it. Let us tattoo on them the basic human values that have sustained entire generations.
Above all, let us de-circumcise the toxic masculinity that has been sold as the mark of manhood for far too long. And if circumcision is indeed a way of turning a child into an adult, then let us re-circumcise an entire nation whose social, economic, and political development has remained largely juvenile for decades now.
Mr Muchiri is a media and public communications consultant. He also mentors teenagers and young adults. muchiri.karanja@gmail.com
