Traditional initiation involving circumcision remains an important topic among the Nandi people for several reasons.
At the top of the list is the public health discourse and debates around the prevention of initiates’ deaths. But initiation is also important because the practice is still relevant and employed in a range of rural and urbanising communities across the county and Kenya at large.
The County Departments of Health and Sanitation and that of Culture has started advocating for safe initiation.
As part of the advocacy, department officials recently held a cultural leaders (Nandi Kaburwo Elders, traditional and religious leaders) engagement meeting on safe male initiation practices.
The traditional leaders openly endorsed and supported pre-initiation camps to educate and socialise boys and ensure stakeholder commitment to the safe operation of initiation spaces.
The objectives of the engagement meeting were to advocate for safe male circumcision practices, to review data on the triple threat with a focus on the boy child, to evaluate cultural practices in line with emerging diseases/conditions and to come up with a way forward on key recommendations.
The one-day meeting was convened by the National Syndemic Diseases Control Council (NSDCC).
At the meeting, the elders also called for dialogues at the community level to find ways to improve the health standards in the initiation processes. These dialogues should involve men and elderly women, parents and custodians of culture, in particular the duty bearers within the Traditional Leaders.
The County Government of Nandi accompanies and supports efforts to ensure the rite of passage is safe for our boys.
It does so by collaboratively finding practical, achievable as well as implementable measures to deal with challenges confronting Customary Male Initiation across the county.
