A woman's approach to ending a perilous rite of passage

Some of the strategies he identifies that could end FGM in the Masai community: reconciling rescued girls with their families once their safety is ensured; teaching people that the coming-of-age ritual can be performed without the circumcision procedure; and persuading young men not to insist on marrying only someone who has been circumcised.

International rights groups such as Amnesty International are also starting to work more closely with activists from within traditional communities. Amnesty has followed the advice of local partners and avoided pressing for national legislation outlawing female circumcision, says Adotei Akwei, a director with Amnesty's Stop Violence Against Women campaign, in a phone interview. "You don't want to drive it underground, lose control completely, and increase the risk," he says.

The Masai are seminomadic pastoralists, most of whom live in southern Kenya. With restrictions placed on their traditional cattle-grazing lands, Masai who do not choose to move to the city now make a living with small-scale farming and by selling crafts to tourists.

When Olekina met Kaelo in 2003, she had already been circumcised and threatened twice with early marriage because her parents could no longer afford to feed their family - they had no cows left to trade, and the forest that once surrounded their home had been slowly obliterated as they cut it down for fuel.

Olekina visited Kaelo's school in search of bright Masai girls to sponsor. A teacher told him that Kaelo had too much potential to be wasted in an early marriage and needed to be allowed to continue her education. Kaelo's parents were eager for the opportunity to keep her in school. With funding from the US Agency for International Development's Africa Education Initiative, MED paid for Kaelo to finish high school and sit for her final exams, which she aced. Also graduating that year were Kisai, Nkadori, and more than 100 other Masai women who received aid from MED and USAID.

The Big Three spent one year at MED's computer training school in 2004 and finished the program at the top of their class. Three months into their pre-medicine programs at Chicago State, the women were already talking about plans to return to Kenya as doctors and open a hospital for rural Masai communities.

They say most early marriages occur today out of economic necessity. When parents can no longer pay for school fees, they see early marriage as the only way to keep their daughters from ending up on the streets. Few Masai men will marry uncircumcised women.

But the genuine concern that Masai families have for their daughters may play a key role in ending FGM, they say, if the dangers of the practice are communicated.

While international anti-FGM campaigns have pressed for laws that have resulted in the arrest of rural Masai parents, the women say, discussions about its dangers and the policy issues surrounding it rarely reach the isolated communities where the practice is most common.

"I am certain that when these girls go back, they will have a great impact on their community," says Sarah Moten, chief of the education division of the USAID Africa Bureau, in a phone interview. "It will be a female who will stop FGM."

The Big Three insist that that female must also be Masai.

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