Kilifi, Kenya

Herbert and I have just had a long debate about whether I should be writing this story at all, or just continue on happily describing the lions and cheetahs and elephants of the rest of our magnificent family safari. In the end, we decided it needed to be told, for the reason that what we learned on the day I'm about to describe made us both weep with despair and tremble with hope. When something moves us that much, it's important that we share it with you.

It began during a visit to a school - a rather miserable-looking school, a set of low cement block structures standing out boldly and somewhat incongruously on the windblown savannah. As we arrived, teachers swept out from the classrooms and eager little brown faces crowded into the windows.

The minute I saw one of the teachers was a woman, an intelligent and elegant-looking lady in a headscarf, I whispered to Herbert, "This one is mine." So far we had been seeing Africa exclusively through the eyes of men. The women are too shy, don't speak English, and are too busy to speak to us. They are the ones working in the fields, harvesting the maize and pounding it into flour, walking slowly and proudly erect with 20 litres of water on their heads, bent over collecting firewood with toddlers strapped to their backs. They're not, as a rule, going to school, chatting with strangers, or sitting around wondering how to earn an income. They are on the front line of the life and death struggle to keep their families alive.

So I immediately attached myself to Valens John, who proved to be a marvellous woman, a college-educated member of the Kikuyu tribe who has, surprisingly, married a Maasai man. She brought us through the different rooms, which looked nothing like the bright, well-equipped classrooms of Canada: these were just bare concrete block walls and long wooden desks. No electricity, no colourful posters, no piles of books, no clutter -- just rows of desks filled two or three at a time with students, and a blackboard.

The children sang for us, beautiful African songs made more lovely by the hopeful young faces that sang them. Outside, my sister Linda led the grade fives in an enthusiastic round of the Hokey Pokey, not as melodious, but full of giggles.

As we toured through the junior grades, we noticed there were more boys than girls, nothing too surprising there. But there was a big difference between grade five and grade six, where there was a sudden drop-off: only two lonely girls huddled together in the chilly room, surrounded by boys. Grade seven was even worse: no girls at all.

That afternoon, Herbert, Linda and I stayed back from the game drive to engage in a fascinating three-hour discussion with Valens John about the problems of girls in Maasai land.

What we learned hurt. The reason there are no girls in grade six is because at age 12 or 13 they are circumcised. Once they undergo this rite of passage, they are ready to be sold off as wives. So before they know it, little girls the ages of Michael and Jon are married to a stranger, a man double or triple their age, and pregnant. School days are over.

I asked Valens whether the girls are afraid of the circumcision.

"Oh yes," she said without hesitation. "They are very afraid." And then, in a low voice, she described why, her words cutting deep into our hearts and producing in us a pain that was almost physical.

The circumcision, or female genital mutilation as it is properly termed, is performed by a "doctor" who specializes in this procedure. If the girl is lucky her surgeon is sober, but likely as not, the doctor is shakily recovering the all-night celebration feast and palm wine drinking binge that began the evening before.

The child to be circumcised is brought from her hut and held down by four women, one pinioning each limb. Her skirt is pulled up. Her mother holds her head, whispering to her to be brave. Cold water is thrown on the child's naked lower body, all the anaesthetic she will receive. She is shaking with fear, perhaps crying, but not struggling. She is obedient.

Using a simple knife, the surgeon wastes no time and cuts into her flesh, slicing away the girl's inner and outer labia, completely excising her sensitive clitoris. The pain is excruciating. She is screaming now, and sometimes faints. Blood runs down her skinny legs.

The raw gash is doused with fresh urine, and perhaps ashes. In a few minutes it is over; this is not an exercise in precision. The girl is carried to bed to begin her recovery; the rest of the village celebrates. It may take a few days before she is able to walk, and in two weeks, if she is lucky, she will begin to resume her normal chores. She will not go back to school. She is a Maasai woman now. The search will begin for a husband, a bride price will be negotiated and her future will be decided, in the same way women's futures have been determined here for all of known history.

"Do the girls ever get infected and die?" one of us dared to ask.

"Oh yes, a large number," Valens answered quietly.

What was a large number, I wondered?

"One or two," Valens said.

"Out of a hundred?" I asked, fearfully.

"Out of ten," she whispered.

Linda, Herbert and I couldn't help ourselves and began to weep. Valence did too, her large, slightly slanted dark eyes brimming over with tears. I was imagining being in Valens's position, watching these innocent girls enter grade five, like lambs to the slaughter, knowing what awaits them, knowing one day why they are gone, and why they will never return. As to why the Maasai perform this barbarism on their children, no one could give us an answer. Tradition.

Later Herbert asked one of our Maasai guides why, since the Maasai culture forbids murder, it forces its girls to go through something that has a high chance of killing them. Isn't it the same thing as murder?

"Oh, if a girl dies that way, they don't see the circumcision as the cause," was the answer. "If the girl dies, it would have to be because of something her father has done. Perhaps he was cursed."

Valens herself, being from an educated family and from a different tribe, had not been circumcised.

"But I have to keep it a secret," she told us. "Because if the other Maasai knew, they would refuse to even touch our daughter, since I am unclean." We were relieved to learn that Valens's beautiful little baby girl, who arrived a few minutes later in the arms of her doting father, would never have to undergo the terrible ritual her mother had just finished describing.

We wanted to know what it was like for a modern woman like Valens to be married to a Maasai man. Clearly, her husband, John, was exceptional as well. The other Maasai men were already ribbing him for feeding and diapering his daughter. Once he had handed his baby over to another of the guides at Rekero and discovered this was the first time the other man had ever held a child. The reluctant babysitter was the father of four.

John was also a teacher, although unemployed. Ron Beaton, the owner of Rekero, the lodge at which we were staying, had created a part-time job for him as a guide to help him out. In fact we had seen John already without knowing it, indistinguishable in his red robes from the rest of the Maasai men.

We learned that although the Beatons only needed a staff of 16 at their small lodge, in fact they employed 28 - they had simply created extra jobs for worthy people like John who needed the help. The Beatons also were funding two local schools, including the one we had visited - paying for renovations, providing a proper roof and floor, sponsoring students for further education.

But the Beatons had done something else we found even more amazing, and that was in their treatment of our favourite guide, Jackson. "He's not the typical Maasai man," Valens had told us, approvingly.

Ron Beaton, also recognizing the young man's potential, had made him a shareholder in the business, something I had never heard of before in Africa - a white man and a black man in partnership. He had also brought Jackson to the States for training. (Poor Jackson had gone into a transvestite bar in L.A. and had run out, screaming.) Jackson ran the gift shop, dealt with the women's craft cooperative and probably did a hundred other things of which we had no idea.

We learned the measure of the man one day after a particularly thrilling game drive. We had already found a whole pride of lionesses and cubs, a magnificent sight, but had still not achieved our objective of seeing a male lion. That day, Jackson had delivered. One of Herbert's lifetime highlights will always be standing in an open truck as a male lion walked slowly right around it, close enough to touch. A few minutes later, as if on command, Action Jackson, as we were now calling him, had also conjured up a large female cheetah.

Afterwards, Herbert had gone over to thank Jackson personally. Herbert's hand was in his pocket, and perceiving that Herbert was about to tip him, Jackson had said, "No no, keep your money. Over the next year, you'll need it more than I will." Jackson was an exceptional man, in every way.

After our troubling talk with Valens, we took up the topic with Jackson. We learned that he has two daughters of his own, and is also refusing to have them circumcised, a status shared by only two per cent of Maasai women.

"Oh my father would have been so angry!" he told us. "But he is dead now, and I am the head of my family, so no one may question what I decide."

It was becoming very clear to us that not only is education the key, but that there is no hope for the women unless the men are educated first. Funded by Rekero and by donations from guests, Jackson administers a scholarship fund to enable worthy students to continue with their schooling. He is particularly interested in girls who need help.

"It's very hard," he said. "We always try to identify these girls that may be able to continue, but there are so very few." Once, Jackson actually rescued a young girl from a forced marriage, physically stealing her away from the man who was buying her and convincing her parents to allow her to return to school.

Herbert and I have spent hours discussing the Maasai, a tribe that filled us with contradictory feelings of admiration and revulsion. Although we, as outsiders, want to encourage them to change their practices, in fact these changes run directly counter to their culture, a culture of which they are extremely proud. What right do we have to insist upon a fundamental cultural change? Even if we have the right, do we have the power?

The answer is, of course, that such a change can only come from within.

Yet we left Rekero encouraged, knowing that the wave of change has already come to the Maasai; it's been lapping at their shores whether they know it or not.

It is coming through brave and groundbreaking people like the three we are honoured to have met, Valens, John and Jackson - and supported by conscientious people like the Beatons. They are part of the vanguard. Others will follow.

Although they have come too late for all the missing little girls in those half empty grade six classrooms - and perhaps even too late for their daughters soon to be born - there is hope for their granddaughters. In this perplexing, slow-moving, half-tamed continent, two generations is, after all, but the merest blink of time.

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