With Maasai in Africa
We are in Kenya where this young girl (13) was about to marry the tribe's chief. (73) He already had many wives. I forgot what we were talking about here at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro in her Maasai settlement called an engang. But, her spirit of kindness and curiosity I remember well.
I did her hair and she did mine. She had recently undergone the brutal female circumcision. Both boys and girls usually are circumcised between the ages of 13 and 18. It is a symbol of walking away from childhood into their adult lives. Someday perhaps this bloody and painful ritual will end.
