Celebrating African Motherhood - Amref

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A Blend of Health and Culture
A thick ceiling of branches provides a shaded enclosure for morans taking
part in the Olpul session in a grove of trees on a forested mountainside in
Entasoopia, Magadi Division. ‘Stop FGM!’ screams a poster pinned to the
trunk of a tree. In the privacy and familiar surroundings of a bush a little
way off , a nurse from the Olkirimatian health centre counsels and tests
morans who want to know their HIV status.
“Our cultural practices used to put us in danger of getting HIV, but we
did not realise it,” says Lelein Kanunga, chief of the morans of Magadi
Division. Morans are young, circumcised Maasai men aged between 14-25
years. They are the warriors of the community, charged with duties such
as searching for stolen livestock and defending the community against
attack. Renowned for their proud cultural heritage and traditional way of
life, the Maasai are a very conservative people. As chief, 18-year-old Lelein,
is the spokesperson for his age group, consulting elders on their behalf and
communicating key decisions to his peers. He has been trained by AMREF
as a peer educator for youth on reproductive health issues, including HIV.
Morans would share one razor to shave their heads. Morans are also very
popular with girls; in fact, they are encouraged to have many girlfriends,
but this again makes them vulnerable to HIV. They would get sick but did
not know why. Then AMREF trained a group of moran chiefs about HIV and
other health issues so that they could go and teach their fellow morans.
They realised that there were a lot of things that needed to change in their
community to stop their people from dying. The moran chiefs are ‘mobile
peer educators’ and are able to move with the morans when they migrate
to search for pasture and water for their livestock. And so the morans
can always access reproductive health information and services such as
condoms and referral for STI treatment.
“The girl morans are known as esiankikin. They have unique problems
which we are now addressing. Our girls are circumcised, and yet there
is really no good reason for doing it; it’s based on the belief that it will
prevent women from straying from their marital homes. As soon as they
are circumcised, the young girls are married off , often to much older men. .
The girls get pregnant when they are very young and their bodies es are not
strong enough to have babies. Many men beat their wives and all this is