(Photo by Anja Ligtenberg)
When a Maasai girl is in her early teens, she participates in a series of rituals that lead to her becoming, in the eyes of the tribe, a woman. In one of those rituals (pictured below) her “girl” hair is shaved off so that her new “woman” hair can replace it. Another ritual still performed by some Maasai, though not by those in the photograph, is female circumcision. It’s a practice that is still performed in many African countries. One of the organizations trying to stop it is Amref Health Care, an NGO that offers a wide variety of health programs throughout Africa. Amref’s approach is to work closely with the Maasai in Kenya to create new rituals to replace female circumcision. One of the new rituals is a ceremony where the girls light candles and declare their dreams for the future, and the parents promise not to circumcise their daughters and to keep them in school.
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