The circumcision season just ended for my Kalenjin neighbours. Families travelled from cities to bring their children to be converted into men. Weeks in the forest clad in skimpy shawls for the teenage boys, and apparently, alot of beatings too . Poor kids. Survival training

The problem is that some of those kids took it personally . Some parents too. So alot of people reported assaults that ranged from ridiculously minor to serious blood letting . It's the parents that got serious injuries.

Modernity is all to blame. Circumcision services used to be free, and a service of honour that could not be compensated by anything. It was a service delegated by the gods, and the livestock sacrifices were the best way to repay the gods for their benovelence. Capitalism has ruined everything! Ceremonial rites have a strict value. Parents were whipped for failing to pay up.

The office of the circumciser is a serious office that commanded respect just a generation before ours. Kids suffered silently, re-emerged from their seclusion and training as men that commanded the respect of even their own mothers, and lived the rest of their lives indebted to their circumciser. But that was before their services could be quantified into notes and coins. How far we have come.