IMAGE SOURCEGETTY IMAGESJohn can barely remember a time when having sex with his wife did not end with her in tears. It was just too painful because she had undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). "Anytime I go to Martha, she recoils, curling like a child. She cries, begging me to leave her alone. She doesn't want to have sex any more," the 40-year-old says. John and Martha come from Kenya's Marakwet community in western Kenya.
Although FGM is illegal in Kenya, girls in their community often undergo FGM between the ages of 12 and 17, as a rite of passage in preparation for marriage. Martha was cut when she was 15.
Sex as an endurance test
"It is painful when we have sex. I wish this practice would end," she says, adding that it had also made childbirth very difficult for her. Recounting their first sexual experience, the couple describe it as traumatising. Martha says she felt a lot of pain and it is not how she had imagined sex would be. She had to ask her husband to stop.
"I didn't realise a part of her [vulva] had been stitched, leaving only the urethra and a tiny vaginal opening," John tells the BBC. "I try to be very compassionate with my wife. I don't want her to feel like I don't respect her, yet we are a couple."
They lived in agony with little hope that things would ever change - not just for them, but they feared for their young daughter as well. That was until John heard of an anti-FGM campaign meeting in his village, targeting men. READ MORE
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