Cath Holland and Domtila Chesang speak with the easy affection of best friends. They gently mock each other, finish each other’s sentences and burst into fits of laughter at something the other has said. At first they seem an unlikely pair – Holland, 64, grew up in a large Irish immigrant family in Lancashire; Chesang, 40 years her junior, was raised in a hut in Kenya.
Their friendship began when Holland, a midwife, was volunteering in the West Pokot region in west Kenya 30 years ago and began touring the region to warn about the dangers of female genital mutilation (FGM). Chesang, then nine and traumatised after witnessing the mutilation of her cousin, sought Holland’s advice and the two struck up a friendship. Holland even paid for Chesang’s education. Decades later, their bond is strengthened by a united passion to combat FGM in some of Kenya’s most remote regions through awareness campaigns.
Their most recent triumph is the successful launch – on a shoestring budget – of an anti-FGM billboard campaign, supported by the Guardian’s global media campaign to end FGM. Last October, a competition was opened to schools across the region to design the artwork for the campaign. The winning entry is by Consolata Lokiru, a schoolgirl whose handpainted depiction of a cutting ceremony with the words “Say No to FGM” was selected from 300 entries.
The artwork can be seen on huge billboards all over West Pokot, with the aim of targeting people during the “cutting season”, which began in December. The use of billboards is a highly effective tool in the battle against FGM, providing an instantly visible message in remote areas where information broadcast on television and radio may not be heard.
“It’s going to reach almost everybody in the region,” says Chesang. “But more than that it is going to empower those girls who took part in the competition. The girls have been given a chance to speak for themselves, and they can see they are being listened to.”
Chesang grew up in a household where there was no money for food, let alone expensive school fees. She says it is only thanks to Holland that she went on to become a teacher and can carry out her activist work today. “I knew if I could go to school it would change things for me,” she says. “If Cath had not paid my fees I could have never realised what I was capable of.”
Holland looks at her young friend with a wide smile. “Now Domtila has all these skills, she’s so empowered,” she says. “I’m so proud of her. She’s some kind of miracle really.”
The pair met in 1998 when Holland arrived in Kenya with VSO; her two sons were grown up and she was looking for a new challenge. “I was probably bored,” she admits. “I had that feeling of a bit of emptiness, I wanted to be useful.”
It was while training traditional birth attendants that she first learned about FGM and started the campaigning that would become her life’s work. Invited to an initiation ceremony of Nellie, a young girl she had befriended, Holland came face to face with the reality of FGM. “It was horrendous,” she says. “I couldn’t turn my back on the FGM that was happening after that. How could I pretend that I hadn’t seen it?”
After seeing women die in childbirth, unable to give birth because of scar tissue, Holland began training local midwives about the dangers of the practice.
She also started telling children they didn’t need to go through FGM. It was the message Chesang had been waiting for. “I had witnessed my cousin being cut,” she says. “The women were drunk, they were singing over her screams. She was helpless, completely naked. There was blood all over.” She shudders at the memory. “I ran all the way home, I was in shock. The realisation had hit me.” When she confided in Holland what she had seen, the older woman comforted her and told her not to agree to have it done herself. “That was exactly what I needed to hear,” she says.
FGM, the removal of part or all of a girl’s genitalia, has been illegal in Kenya since 2001, with laws tightened 10 years later to make it illegal to provide premises for FGM to take place, and to be aware of the crime and not report it. But about 27% of women and girls have been through FGM, and among the Masai the rate is 73%. The Guardian recently launched a partnership with the UN’s population fund, the UNFPA, and Kenyan media houses to raise awareness about the dangers of the practice.
But Holland said a huge amount of work was needed on the ground, where she has seen the devastating impact of FGM at first hand.. With Chesang and a small group of birth attendants taught by the Lancashire midwife, she launched Beyond FGM and with local organisation Kepsteno Rotwo – which translates as drop the knife – they run alternative initiation ceremonies. In the past four years they have rescued 1,000 girls from FGM. “I suppose it’s my life’s work,” says Holland, modestly. “Seeing what we can do with so little makes life more worthwhile – and I definitely don’t have time to be bored any more.”
Holland and Chesang travel on buses, stay in hostels and eat with local people in order to plough every penny they earn into the work they do, and have recently raised half of the funds to construct a refuge for girls running away from FGM, which will act as a home for the charity.
Chesang recalls Holland explaining that she wanted to help others, because she had received help from the NHS as a child of a large immigrant Irish family. “I guess that’s my socialist principles,” says the older woman. Now her protege wants to do the same: “As I was helped, so I want to help,” says Chesang.
“Those girls are just like I was, they’re scared and they need someone to tell them they are right [not to be cut]. If we can stop these girls being cut, if we can give them other opportunities, then who knows what they will achieve.”
