At 25, Nice Nailantei Leng'ete is an Amref ambassador against female genital mutilation. In 2018, Time magazine named her one of the hundred most influential people in the world.
When she said no to the "cut" and fled her village in Kenya, Nice was just 9 years old. The first time, she and her older sister spent the whole night up a tree. When their relatives found them, they beat them. The second time, her sister refused to hide and let herself be cut. "She told me it was right that she should be the one to sacrifice herself, being the eldest. That maybe, that way, they would leave me alone," she recalls. We meet her in Milan, on the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). She is wearing a traditional dress and Maasai necklaces, her gaze resolute and her smile gentle.
For Maasai families, female genital mutilation is a rite – one that has nothing to do with religion – that transforms girls into women and makes them ready for marriage. "I was afraid of dying. Some people had died because of the cut. And I feared that, even if I didn't die, they would no longer send me to school and would force me to marry," she explains, adding: "A teacher I had once had opened my eyes to mutilation. She came from a community where it was not practised and explained to me why it was a terrible and wrong thing. So I decided to challenge tradition."
The World Health Organization defines female genital mutilation as "any procedure that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or any other injury to the female genital organs, for non-medical reasons." In 2016, despite being illegal in many countries, FGM affects at least 200 million women and girls, 70 million more than the figure estimated in 2014. In some countries in East Africa (Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia) the prevalence of the phenomenon reaches peaks of 98 per cent of the female population. Practices such as early marriage and school dropout are closely linked to FGM.
In 2008, thanks to an Amref programme on women's health, Nice became a community educator. "They came to tell us they needed a boy and a girl who could read and write. Even though my choice had cast me in a bad light within the community, I was selected because I was one of the few girls who had studied. The others, after the cut, had married and had children." From that moment, the real battle began.
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Nice goes from village to village, raising women's awareness of mutilation and the need to replace the practice with alternative rites of passage. Through these rites, the transition of women from childhood to adulthood is no longer tied to a razor blade, but to schoolbooks, education and the active involvement of communities. Her determination ultimately yields the hoped-for results. To the point that the men of the community recognise her natural leadership. She receives the Esiere, "the black staff" that is granted only to Maasai elders.
"It is not easy to make people who come from worlds different from mine understand why it is so complicated to eradicate this hateful tradition. The girls' parents and all the communities involved are convinced they are acting in the girls' best interests. If a girl is not 'cut' she will not find a husband and will have to bear the stigma of her condition. It is a mindset that needs to change, through education and informed awareness."
Since then, her battle alongside Amref has enabled her to save more than 16,000 women.
"The United Nations has set the goal of a total ban on FGM by 2030," Nice notes. "I will keep doing my part, so that girls can grow into adults without being subjected to any cut. And so that each one of them knows, in Kenya and elsewhere, that she can become the woman of her dreams."
