Vagina monologues: until the violence stops.

• Author: Miruka, Okumba

Men fight and kill one another over it," says one of the young women on the trip. "Yet they cannot even mention it by name". The woman was talking about the vagina during a trip organised by Mumbi Kaigwa of the Theatre Company to Narok Town to present the proceeds from the V-Day concert held in March. The boldness with which the women spoke about the female physiology would take any ordinary person aback, given the censorship with which we are trained to treat sexual organs. In fact, Kaigwa herself cannot stop wondering at the transformation that went on since she first recruited the cast. "What have we created?" she muses. "They never used to talk like this when I met them." Not that Kaigwa regrets anything. One of the things the Vagina Monologues set out to do was to demystify the female physiology and encourage women to accept themselves in totality. To that extent, it looks like the performance achieved a great deal for those who took part in the production.

But there was another aim of the Vagina Monologues' performance. It was to raise funds for ventures towards eliminating violence against women and girls. In the words of the founder of V-Day and author of The Vagina Monologues, Eve Enlser, the mission of V-Day is "to stop worldwide violence against women and girls." The violence comes in different forms such as wife battery and assault, female genital mutilation, widow inheritance, humiliating marital practices, dispossession of property, discriminative dietary practices, rape and trafficking of girls for sex trade. The list is endless. But the vision is clear, that V-Day will be commemorated every year "until the violence stops."

V-Day originated out of Ensler's conversations with women who approached her after early performances of the Vagina Monologues to tell her of their own experiences of violence. She began to use performances of the play to raise funds for organisations working to stop violence. Soon, she and the group of women who make up V-Day found that support for their efforts was far-reaching and expansive. What began as a simple possibility quickly transformed into a worldwide social and activist movement.

Today V-Day is a global movement that helps anti-violence organizations throughout the world to continue and expand their work on the ground, while drawing public attention to the larger fight to stop worldwide violence against women and girls. In just five years, it has raised over $13.5 million. In 2002, V-Day evolved from one day--Valentine's Day--into a 12-week calendar of events and social action campaigns.

This year, the performances in Kenya were coordinated by Kaigwa, a theatre personality. Mumbi worked with a cast of 20 actresses each of whom had parts to read of the monologues. Held at the International School of Kenya in Nairobi on March 22, the performances were complemented with a women artists' exhibition, a puppetry workshop and demonstration and a rape-free zone vigil. The proceeds from the performance were earmarked for assisting the Women's Rights Awareness Programme (WRAP) in Nairobi and the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative in Narok Kenya.

That is why on May 30, a bus-load of the actresses and three men from FEMNET's men against gender-based violence network made its way to Narok to present a cheque of KSh 260,000 (USD 3,500) to the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative. This is a venture initiated by Agnes Pareyio, currently an elected councillor in Narok Town Council, through which she undertook exploratory activities against female genital mutilation (FGM) which is practiced by her Maasai community. Pareyio began to introduce alternative rites of passage for female adolescents not by being virulent and antagonistic but by educating the public on the vagaries of FGM using a blown up doll.

"FGM is a secret culture that its practitioners and victims keep quiet about," she says. "So we linked the whole thing to girls' education to avoid conflict and resistance." Pareyio found this a useful strategy...