Meet the remarkable woman who escaped genital mutilation as a girl – and is now saving thousands of youngsters

Nice Nailantei Leng’ete will never forget the first time ‘cutting season’ came around in her Kenyan village. She and her elder sister Soila ran away and hid in a tree all night. It was dark and they were petrified. They were just eight and 10 years old. “‘We have to run, it will be worth it,’ I said to my sister,” Ms Leng’ete, now 27, told i. “I was scared.

I was thinking, will they find me there and force me to go through FGM [Female genital mutilation]? I was worried that I might die, or if I did not die I would not be able to go back to school and I would be married.” For Maasai families, the cutting ceremony is a celebration that’s considered a necessary part of raising a girl, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage.

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