Got misophobia?

Germs in Your Home: Kitchen Sponges

 

A kitchen sponge can carry more than 134,000 bacteria per square inch, according to a 2007 survey funded by Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of Lysol, and performed by the Hygiene Council. Researchers swabbed 35 U.S. homes for bacteria in 32 different sites.

What makes a sponge so buggy? Using sponges for more than one purpose is common, and people tend to keep their sponges too long, allowing bacteria to multiply, says Kelly Bright, PhD, assistant research scientist at the University of Arizona. “It’s a moist environment, and a sponge is a nice breeding ground.”

Cross-contamination of sponges is common, Bright tells WebMD. You cut raw meat, wipe it up, then prepare another dish and wipe with the same sponge. On a typical sponge you’re likely to find Salmonella (which can cause food-borne illness) and Campylobacter, which can cause diarrhea and abdominal pain, Bright says.

Remedy: Replace your sponge once a week or so, Bright suggests. Or put it in the dishwasher regularly or soak it in bleach for about 15 minutes. “The dirtier the sponge, the longer you have to soak it to be effective.”

Germs in Your Home: Kitchen Sink

 

Whether empty or full of dishes, the kitchen sink is a germ hot spot, says Bright. “People do a lot of food preparation there,” and that food can lead to contamination, with kitchen drains having more than 500,000 bacteria per square inch, according to the Hygiene Council survey.

Remedy: If you think the last bit of soap suds from washing dishes will take care of things, think again, says Philip Tierno, Jr., PhD, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tisch Hospital, New York University Medical Center, and associate professor of microbiology and pathology at NYU School of Medicine.

“Soap doesn’t kill bacteria,” says Tierno, the U.S. representative for the Hygiene Council. His favorite cleaning solution: bleach and water. The FDA suggests kitchen sanitizers or a homemade solution of one teaspoon chlorine bleach in a quart of water, then letting it sit on the surface you’re cleaning for 10 minutes.

Germs in Your Home: Faucet Handles

 

Both bathroom and kitchen faucet handles are germ-catchers. In the Hygiene Council survey, kitchen faucet handles carried more than 13,000 bacteria per square inch and bathroom faucet handles had more than 6,000 bugs per square inch.

Remedy: “Use a disinfectant cleaner spray every time you clean up,” suggests Charles Gerba, PhD, professor of soil, water and environmental science at the University of Arizona, who has researched microbes extensively. In the kitchen, that should be once a day, he says. In the bathroom, at least once a week.

Germs in Your Home: Home Offices

 

Surprise: your home office is germier than the typical work office, says Gerba. In a recent study, he compared the average number of bacteria in work and home office to find the numbers of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can cause serious skin infections.

In his sampling of 60 home offices and 91 work offices, five sites were tested in each. MRSA was isolated in 15 home offices but no work offices. And overall, more bacteria were found in home offices than work offices. Germiest spots in the home office were the keyboard, mouse, phone, and desktop.

“Probably people eat more in the home office,” Gerba says, partially explaining the larger bug population. “You turn your desk into a bacteria cafeteria.”

Remedy: “Use disinfectant at least once a week” on home office surfaces, suggests Gerba.

Germs in Your Home: Toilet Bowl

 

Not surprisingly, the top germ winner in the Hygiene Council survey was the toilet bowl (but not the seat) with 3.2 million bacteria per square inch. Still, Gerba insists, kitchens are dirtier overall. “There are about 200 times more fecal bacteria on a cutting board,” he says, “than on a toilet seat.”

Remedy: Toilet bowl germs form a biofilm, that slimy layer that develops when bacteria attach to a support such as the bowl, says Tierno. Tackle that film with your chlorine bleach and water solution.

Germs in Your Home: Bathtub

 

Never mind that you think the bubble bath left you and your tub squeaky clean. Lurking near the drain of the bathtub is nearly 120,000 bacteria per square inch, according to calculations made in the Hygiene Council Survey.

Remedy: Give your bathtub a buff with bath cleaner or a chlorine-water cleaning solution mixed up at home.

Germs in Your Home: Shower Curtain

 

The crud or soap scum that collects on your shower curtain probably Sphingomonas and Methylobacterium bacteria,says Norman Pace, PhD, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, University of Colorado, who collected biofilm from four vinyl shower curtains that had been in place more than six months in Boulder-area homes.

They found an abundance of Sphingomonas and Methylobacterium bacteria, and both could pose a problem for people who are immune-compromised, such as those who are HIV positive, or who have other diseases that make them prone to infections.

Remedy: Regular cleaning or replacement of the curtains is advised.

Germs in Your Home: Wet Laundry

 

What are germs doing in your washing machine? Probably contaminating other clothes. A load of just-washed clothes may look sparkling clean, but guess again.

Researchers at the University of Arizona found that intestinal viruses like hepatitis A are readily transferred from contaminated clothes to uncontaminated clothing during the washing.

Remedy: Bleach and drying time. The use of bleach reduced the number of infectious viruses on swatches after washing and drying by nearly 100%, the researchers found. Putting clothes through the drying cycle helped reduce viruses, too, according to Bright, and a hot water wash is good. “If you use the dryer, put it on hot,” she says, to kill remaining germs. And “separate adult clothes from kids’ clothes.”

Germs in Your Home: Vacuum Cleaner

 

It’s supposed to clean, but your vacuum cleaner is also a source of contamination, Gerba tells WebMD. “We looked at 30 vacuum brushes. € Fifty percent contained coliform fecal bacteria and 13% E. coli,” says Gerba. E. coli can cause diarrhea and other health problems. Coliform bacteria don’t typically cause illness, but are often found in the presence of other disease-causing organisms.

“Vacuums become meals on wheels” for the bugs, Gerba says.

Remedy: “There’s not much you can do about the brush,” he says. “Vacuum the cleanest areas first and the dirtiest last,” he suggests. That way, you’ll be less likely to spread around as much bacteria. And if you use a bagless vacuum cleaner, wash your hands afterward, since bacteria can remain in the receptacle.

Germs in Your Home: Beds

 

Mattresses and pillows provide food for dust mites, Tierno tells WebMD, and bedding can also be a reservoir for molds and spores. “In the mattress core there are all sorts of human secretions and excretions,” he says. “Fecal matter as well as sweat and semen.”

What’s the problem? “Bedroom debris is probably one of the biggest causes of allergic rhinitis,” Tierno says. “Allergy from dust mites is also a problem.”

Remedy: Place an “impervious” outer cover over the mattresses and pillows, Tierno says, to keep the debris contained. Then wash bedding regularly in water hot enough to kill the bugs.

Losing audience?

The Feeler
The Feeler uses language to express emotion.

How to recognize a Feeler:
She’s an empath and wants to connect, make you feel comfortable. If you’re not doing so well, she’ll try to figure out a way to help you.

How to get a Feeler to cooperate:
Listen for signals that she is overwhelmed or exhausted. The Feeler needs to hear two things: One, that you understand she’s having difficultiessomething like: “I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time. I don’t want to make things more difficult for you.” Second, explain that she’s the best one to help you: “I’m in trouble and I need your advice; you’re so good in situations like this.” Being a rescuer is the role she lives to fill, but she wants to be acknowledged for it. When she feels appreciated, she’ll be ready to jump in.

The Sensor
The Sensor is driven by the drumbeat of constant deadline; she’s interested in getting things done quickly.

How to recognize a Sensor:
A Sensor labors under the constant pressure of deadlines and does everythingincluding communicating with youin bursts of very intense energy. She has a short attention span and can make you feel as if you’re taking up too much of her time just by saying hello.

How to get a Sensor to cooperate:
She responds best when she knows you have a plan for getting a task done fast. You need to communicate in easily digestible sound bites, so prepare ahead of time. If you don’t get to the point quickly enough, the Sensor will consider you an additional source of stress. What you want the Sensor to know is that you can help reduce her workload.

The Thinker
The Thinker operates on logic: She loves organization and systems and she likes to see projects through to the bitter end.

How to recognize a Thinker:
These people play by numbers and facts. They are logical and realistic, and they will pop any idealistic balloon by citing a similar situation in which someone failed.

How to get a Thinker to cooperate:
A Thinker loves systems and organization and solving problems. So when she points out inaccuracies or mistakes, let her know that you understand and will fix the problem. She needs to be reassured that you’ll stay grounded in reality and that you’ll be very careful about gathering your research.

The Intuitor
The Intuitor thinks in terms of the conceptual and long-range plans; she’s a problem solver but not necessarily interested in sticking around to implement solutionsshe’d rather move on to the next puzzle.

How to recognize an Intuitor:
She’s the one with the big ideas that you have a hard time understanding. She presents information as though you’re supposed to know exactly what she’s talking about. She doesn’t give any contextno last names of people to whom she’s referring, no company names even though she’s discussing a problem specific to that company. When you ask questions, she gets impatient. She doesn’t realize that you don’t know what’s in her brain.

How to get an Intuitor to cooperate:
Let her talk out her ideas for a while before you begin asking questions. They should be phrased to show her you like her ideas but simply need more details to understand the full picture.

♥

A few tips to bring back the audience and add more ….

Sunny Monday

Weekend was busy but productive. We partied till our feet and legs hurt. We mingled met new people and helped out some. We enjoyed and made everyone happy.

Went to hear Sunday’s mass about the blind man. We are not literally blind, but blinded by our wants and likes in life. The negativity to go on top that along the way we stepped and hurt the people whom means so much to us. We need to be contented of what we have, open our eyes and be thankful for all the blessings that came our way. We can explore our dreams and wants but in a nicer way. Think positive!!!

Our new place is starting to be like home. But needs to clean up and organize big time and do not want to wait for the holiday season for it. One more week and Halloween is here to stay and after that endless parties and get together(s). I just hope everything will push through and not overlap one another.

I know it will be one busy year again for us but hey, we can really shout and yes we survived another year.

Are you ready for the holidays?

Who is Marci Bowers?

The small Colorado town of Trinidad has more than three decades of experience with lantern-jawed, 6-foot-3 women in magenta tube tops and strappy platform sandals passing through.

The town’s deep and unlikely attachment to the procedure that turns men into women could have ended in 2003, when Dr. Stanley Biber, a one-man industry, put down his scalpel after 35 years of performing his signature surgery.

But Marci Bowers, a gynecological surgeon in Seattle, decided to train with Biber shortly before he retired.

And that’s when sex-change in Trinidad moved from a cottage industry into the big time.

Bowers already was intimate with the procedure.

Until about a decade ago, she was Dr.Mark Bowers, a man.

And then she wasn’t.

The transformation of Marci Bowers, technically, began in childhood when she somehow understood that while her appearance said male, everything inside – her heart, her head, her spirit – said female.

It took a dramatic turn when she started growing her hair long and dressing as a woman, and another after a surgery by someone other than Biber that finally, and officially, made her a woman.

But then Bowers moved to Trinidad, and, like so many others who come to this town seeking metamorphosis, she found it.

Again.

These days, she whips around town in her silver Porsche Boxster, shuttling between surgeries and routine gynecological exams, between socializing with her Trinidad- native partner and heading north to the airport for one more stop in the parade of public appearances that now thread through her life.

Four years after leaving her wife and kids and run-of-the-mill doctor gig in Seattle, she is one of the more visible impresarios of the transgender movement.

Other transgenders treat her like a rock star, even traveling to Trinidad just to be around her. Documentary news teams have roosted in

Dr. Marci Bowers talks with Carole McKee, left, who works at a shop in Trinidad. Bowers is widely known as a skilled surgeon in the transgender movement, but in Trinidad, “People know me. I’m not demonized. I’m not some abstraction that can be loathed from afar.” (the Post / Glenn Asakawa)

Trinidad in the past year – the BBC, for example, this year ran a six-part series on Bowers and her adopted hometown. She’s been on “The Tyra Banks Show” and did a guest gig on the hit TV show “CSI.” On Wednesday, CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” devoted a segment of its Fighting for Acceptance series to Bowers’ work.

During the middle of a newspaper interview in June, Bowers took a call from her secretary. A television studio had just called and asked Bowers to fly to Los Angeles at the end of the month to appear on a show.

“Yeah, right,” said Bowers, unleashing an almost scandalously sly laugh from the side of her mouth, a throaty, lusty, sardonic outburst that occurs every few minutes. “That will happen.”

Other

Bowers puts on lipstick at her home in the hills above Trinidad before heading to work. Bowers puts on lipstick at her home in the hills above Trinidad before heading to work. Despite missing Seattle, where she remains “closer than sisters” with her spouse, she set on staying put. “This is the edge of something important,” say say. (the Post / Glenn Asakawa)

surgeons had pilgrimaged to Trinidad to learn Biber’s procedure from the master. But Bowers, now 49, was the first to whom he handed the knife in the middle of a procedure. At that point, he’d effectively chosen his heir.

Bowers didn’t quite understand this at the time, although she did grasp the power of the moment: “I shuddered. It was incredible.

“The night before, there was a huge double rainbow over the hospital. Isn’t that weird? It’s things like that that tell me it’s more than an accident that I’m here.”

Bowers’ $17,500 surgeries are booked solid, week after week. Her next available appointment is in March.

Hospitals around the world routinely contact Bowers, asking her to come to London

Courtney Ridley comforts her partner, Lisa Kuester, in their Trinidad hospital room about 30 minutes before Ridley’s transgender surgery. Ridley struggled with gender identity for a long time, including during three failed marriages. (THE DENVER POST | GLENN ASAKAWA)

or Los Angeles.

She says she dreams, every day, of returning to Seattle, to be with her three children and in the orbit of her spouse, to whom she still is married. The two no longer share a romantic relationship, but Bowers says they now are “closer than sisters.”

But for now, at least, Bowers isn’t budging.

“This is the frontier; this is the edge of something important,” she says. “The smallness of (Trinidad) also is nice. I can really control the local environment. People know me. I’m not demonized. I’m not some abstraction that can be loathed from afar.”

Nor are her patients, nearly 500 of whom have changed their genders under Bowers’ knife. Although a few have transitioned from female to

Bowers has obsessed over the procedure she inherited. It is now, she says, much different from Dr. Stanley Biber’s. “Sixty precent of what i do, no one else in the world does.” (the Post / Glenn Asakawa)

male, most of her patients are men becoming women.

Some “pass,” meaning they look like women. Many do not, despite the miniskirts and eyeliner. Size 12 ballet slippers, Adam’s apples and anvil chins give them away.

But what might shout strange, threatening or wrong in similar towns barely registers in Trinidad.

“It’s like growing up with a steel mill,” says Tony Tortorice, 37, a heavy-equipment operator and Trinidad native, as he drinks pints of beer at a pub in town. “Your grandfather worked there, your dad worked there, you work there. You’re used to everything about the industry. It’s the same way here. You see a patient, and you think, ‘Oh, there’s another patient.”‘

He adds: “Most of them are great. You have a few drinks and you’re laughing and joking like you are with your buddies. They’re just looking for friends. Once you befriend them, you will have a friend for life.”

Zach Duran, 24, was born in Trinidad but grew up in Cimmaron, a wisp of a town in western Kansas. He’s back in Trinidad now, working with Tortorice as a heavy-equipment operator.

“When I tell my friends back in Kansas about this, it’s totally mind-blowing to them,” he says. “It’s kind of accepted (in Trinidad), you know? “

With the breakfast rush over at Hot Spot at the Savoy, restaurant owner Diana Velarde says most longtime residents are tied, however indirectly, to the sex-change piece of the Trinidad puzzle.

“Dr. Biber, he raised us all,” she says. “He was like family. He gave us our penicillin shots and sent us on our way. When we lost him, it was like losing a family member.”

Biber died in 2006, but his legacy survives. Bowers now is performing more surgeries a year than Biber ever did. Her patients routinely stop in at the Savoy.

“Nobody bothers them,” Velarde says. “In fact, they fit into the community. And they stay here. Some of them come in here and they are absolutely gorgeous.”

Finally feeling at home

Bowers, for example. Leggy. Blond. High-cheekboned and pouty-lipped. Good-looking woman.

Before she started taking hormones and growing her hair, she was a good-looking man, too. Bowers keeps a photo album of her transition in her Trinidad house – mustached gent in a suit; full-bearded guy relaxing on a couch; wavy-haired character clowning with the spouse; woman in a restaurant.

Home is where Bowers escapes the gossip- humid small town, where people in the local brewpub shout “Marci!” when she enters and come over for a chat and sometimes a hug; where her romantic partner, Carol Cometto, an exceptionally gregarious Trinidad native, can barely take a step without bumping into an old pal; where Bowers plays golf (she’s a doctor) and gets massages in storage space behind an art gallery from a shaved-head Californian named Pineda.

At home, in a big, orderly brick spread above town, Bowers might find the time to sit down and talk about the topics that animate her, most of which revolve around her surgeries and the idea of compassion.

“I have a spiritual side. That’s what drives me,” she says. “I think there is a grander plan, a higher power, and if you don’t think you are contributing to a better future for the world, then you’re here for a bleak, hedonistic trip.”

Bowers has spent the past four years obsessing over the surgical procedure she inherited from Biber. The surgery now, she says, is much different from Biber’s approach.

“Sixty percent of what I do, no one else in the world does,” she says.

When she talks about the discrimination transgenders face, she becomes agitated, gesticulating and pounding tables or chair arms with her fists.

“There are two ways to look at the world,” she says. “There’s the Hitler view – you look at society and see what you think is wrong and try to exterminate it; get rid of them and they are out of the gene pool and you are left with a perfect society. The opposite view is unconditional love and acceptance. That’s the force that will win.”

That force, she says, is on the march.

Just a decade ago, most people who went through gender-reassignment surgery did it all alone: Their families abandoned them, their bosses fired them, they arrived in Trinidad, or somewhere else, with a suitcase and nothing more.

Now, however, extended families come to Trinidad for support. And while in the past, most patients tended to be middle-aged or even seniors, lately younger and younger people are opting for hormonal therapy and surgery.

Sometimes people who appear male or female actually fall more profoundly in the other gender’s camp. And for them, the tension between their appearance and their inner feelings about who they are can be agonizing.

“It’s not a choice, not a lifestyle,” Bowers says. “It’s about a core identity that doesn’t match up with genitalia. And it just speaks to how complex we are as human beings.”

A cause worth fighting for

As a soldier in what Bowers sees as a battle for acceptance, she speaks at events, she talks to the media, she appears on TV. But her scalpel is her principal weapon. And the operating room is her battlefield.

In there, she’s the general.

With Pink Floyd blasting through a CD player, Bowers sat in a low, wheeled stool for nearly three hours one afternoon in June, barely moving her eyes from the diamond of exposed flesh before her, cracking jokes and talking politics.

Bowers’ team of technicians gathered around, watching for gestures that tell them what tool or task she’s looking for, listening to her commandments: “K-nife,” she says for scalpel. When she makes a sucking sound, a technician hands her a wand that vacuums away blood.

When Bowers started the operation, Courtney Ridley, 50, was living as a woman, but in terms of genitalia, most definitely was not female.

During the surgery, Bowers carefully deconstructed Ridley’s male genitalia, reshaping skin and nerves and other tissue into functioning female genitalia. Among other things, the procedure allows most patients to continue having orgasms.

Ridley, like Bowers, works as a gynecologist and surgeon.

She grew up in tough East Texas as Clark Ridley, secretly wearing panties even as she attended Virginia Military Institute, a prestigious breeding ground for future military leaders.

She went to medical school at the University of Texas. Joined the Navy, where she flew helicopters. Worked as a Navy surgeon for 16 years. Went into private practice in Dallas. Got married three times and had three kids. Played cowboy – the hats, the boots, the belt buckles and the ranch.

All along, Ridley dressed – in secret – as a woman.

“You hit this wall and you have to do something,” said Ridley – fit, nearly 6-feet-tall, looking like a former women’s volleyball star – as she waited for an appointment with Bowers the day before her surgery. “Some people put the gun to their head.”

In April, after she and her wife separated, Ridley began looking to date. She’d always been attracted to women, and the hormones, the skirts and bracelets hadn’t changed anything. ThroughMatch.com, she found Lisa Kuester, 41, a lesbian massage therapist who was searching for romantic mates.

After Ridley told Kuester her story – a lifetime of pretending to be a man and dressing like a woman privately, the upcoming surgery – she steeled herself for rejection. But Kuester embraced her.

“With her, someone who is interested in being with women, I got something I hadn’t had in 30 years of romantic life,” Ridley says.

Mary Harvey, 39, didn’t have that problem, at least.

The New Jersey boat-engine mechanic started dating Shannon Harvey 11 years ago, back when her name was Mark. They got hitched seven years ago, and shortly after, Mary began taking hormones, growing her hair long and calling herself Mary. The couple had two kids, Gwen, now 9, and David, 7.

“I started out with a lot of anger,” said Shannon, 30, as the family waited to see Bowers in the Planned Parenthood offices where Bowers rents space. “I’m the kind of person who picks you apart until I found out what’s wrong, because I want to fix it.”

It was Shannon’s picking that compelled Mary to reveal the desire she’d harbored since being a little kid: She wasn’t like her hairy-chested, balding brothers. She wanted to align herself with what she felt was her true gender.

Focusing on their family

Earlier, before the surgery at Trinidad’s Mount San Rafael Hospital, Mary told Bowers the upcoming operation was “no big deal. I’ve seen engines a lot more complicated than this.”

And even earlier, “it’s just changing some parts, that’s all I’m thinking.”

Life at home tests the Harvey family. They live in the same blue-collar town where they grew up. Shannon always explains the domestic situation to other moms before they have play-dates, and “some wives get nasty,” she says.

The town is full of hard-partyers; the Harvey family steers clear.

“We do our thing. We walk in the woods,” says Mary.

“And get ticks on us!” shouts David.

“I have so much love for this person,” says Shannon, looking over at Mary. “And the family. We’re such a great family unit.”

In the hospital parking lot a week after the surgery, Mary limped along in Army-green capri pants and a yellow tank top. The kids raced to the rented Taurus and then swung between the front and back seats like crazed monkeys.

Before climbing into the car, Mary stopped and talked about how relieved she was to be out of the hospital. “I couldn’t sleep because, you know, she wasn’t there,” she said, gesturing to Shannon.

Mary stepped back and brought the back of a hand to her eyes; she squeezed a sob back into her throat.

“But now it’s going to be better.”

Female Circumcision?

KAMPALA, Oct 19 (IPS) – Over three decades ago a 14-year-old girl, her sister and a group of young teenagers from Bukwo headed to the River Amana for a ceremony that would change their lives forever.

Since her childhood, Gertrude Chebet had been told of the day she would become a woman. She was led to believe it would be a great moment of change and it was something to look forward to with much joy.

As she and her sister began that early morning trek, from their village in eastern Uganda, in the cold and through the bushes to the place of initiation, she expected it to be the best day of her life. But she was wrong. It turned out to be the most harrowing.

“One of the elder women overseeing the circumcision took a sample of our saliva, urine and pubic hair and buried it. She then ordered us to lie on the ground and after the first cut, I lost consciousness and cannot remember what happened next,” she remembers now.

Even after passing out she and the other girls were not allowed to use modern medicine to treat their wounds. Instead she was forced to use cow urine, prescribed by her elders.

Today Chebet is a primary school teacher and campaigns against female circumcision, otherwise known as female genital mutilation.

Chebet condemns it as unnecessarily cruel and inhuman. She is the chairperson of the Kapchorwa/Bukwo Women in Peace Initiative, a lobby group advocating for the enactment of laws to abolish female genital mutilation.

But it has turned out to be a long, hard battle to change an age-old tradition that involves the total removal of the clitoris and scraping of the female private parts.

In fact, even those in positions of power are finding it difficult to change the culture of mutilation against young girls. While earlier this year President Yoweri Museveni condemned the practice, his government has been slow to pass a total ban on female circumcision, partly because his party needs the votes of those who largely support the practice.

The strength of the voters is especially evident in communities where female circumcision is a wide-spread practice. Here, women who have not been mutilated have difficulty being elected and some have lost elections because of their anti- female genital mutilation campaign.

Jane Frances Kuka, the former Gender Minister and former woman Member of Parliament (MP) for Kapchorwa district, an area that has laws banning female circumcision, lost her parliamentary seat partly for having campaigned against female genital mutilation.

“My opponents used my stand against female genital mutilation as a weapon against me. Elders were saying who is this (she) to interfere with our culture?” she says.

Female circumcision is practiced among the Sabiny, Sebei and Pokot in eastern Uganda. It is conducted in various ways around the world, but in Uganda it involves the total removal of the clitoris and scraping of the female private parts.

“It is common for girls to bleed to death after circumcision. Others are infected with disease, some dying of tetanus. Many girls develop problems that affect them during child birth,” Chebet says.

In 2007 the district councils of Kapchorwa and Bukwo passed by-laws prohibiting female circumcision. However these laws are largely ignored and in December 2008 close to 40 girls in Kapchorwa and more than 100 in Bukwo were subjected to the ritual.

Chebet says the road to elimination of female genital mutilation is long and hard. However a few strides are being made through the enactment of by-laws against practice by sub-counties in Kapchorwa and Bukwo. She says the key lies in a national law against female genital mutilation.

Chebet admits that there is great resistance to the abolition of the practice, because it is risky especially for those with political ambitions.

Although Uganda is a signatory to the Maputo Protocol, a charter adopted by the African Union that guarantees the rights of women including the right to end female genital mutilation, it has not passed a law outlawing the practice.

Museveni’s government has been hailed at international female activist conferences for advancing the emancipation of women but has been slow to pass a total ban to female genital mutilation.

Museveni and his party members have had the wider support of voters from Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts partly because he has not interfered with their culture – especially the practice of female circumcision.

In April 2007 women activists under their umbrella boy known as Law and Advocacy for Women in Uganda petitioned the constitutional court in an effort to ban female circumcision.

They argue female genital mutilation is a violation of women’s constitutional rights and that it is a form of torture that constitutes cruel and inhuman treatment.

The Attorney General’s Chambers headed by Attorney General also Ministry of Justice asked the court to dismiss the petition. The constitutional court heard the matter was yet to pass a ruling.

Rukia Nakadama, a culture minister in Uganda says the government was now resolved to work with communities where female genital mutilation was practiced in order to ban it.

She says government will also back the anti-female genital mutilation bill presented to Parliament by a back bench MP – who is a member of the ruling National Resistance Movement party.

Kinkizi East MP, Chris Baryomunsi, a medical doctor from an area where female genital mutilation is not performed has tabled a private member’s bill in the Ugandan Parliament to ban the practice. Ugandan MPs, under article 94 of the Constitution, can initiate a law (under the private member’s bill) if they feel the executive arm of government has not initiated one.

Baryomunsi tells IPS that he feels obliged as a medical practitioner and a legislator to do something for girls and women in that part of Uganda.

“I feel pain and sadness that this is going on in Uganda. That women, willing or unwilling, are subjected to crude methods of having part of their bodies cut when there is no medical benefit. I had to take the lead to fight this injustice,” he says.

Baryomunsi is backed by some female activists including Uganda’s Parliament Deputy Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, and he wants the law to criminalise female genital mutilation.

The bill proposes harsh penalties for traditional surgeons and parents who promote female genital mutilation; it suggests that they face up to 15 years in jail once implicated.

Baryomunsi also wants the law to provide that the consent of a girl or woman will not be valid defence, given the health risks associated with female genital mutilation.

The World Health Organisation in June 2006 released a first study to give evidence of the harmful effects of female genital mutilation. The study indicated that women who have had female circumcision were likely to experience difficulties during child birth and their babies were more likely to die as a result of the traditional yet gruesome practice.

Even male contestants in elections agree that the female genital mutilation has always come up as an issue among the elders concerned about preserving their culture.

Dr John Yeko, a MP representing Kween county, says the stand against female genital mutilation was not the only issue of concern during elections. It was the way people spoke about the issue that also made a difference.

“I agree some people have lost (elections) because of the language they use against female genital mutilation. I have personally spoken against it by emphasising its negative aspects.”

Yeko has three daughters and they have not undergone the practice. “I totally support the ban against (it) because it is a useless part of our culture which should not be tolerated at this point in time,” he says.

The situation is no different in neighbouring Kenya. Linah Jebbi a MP from Marakwet in northern Kenya says the issue of anti- female genital mutilation has always come up during the two times contested the elections.

She says she may have lost the elections if she was not involved in other campaigns, like the campaign for peace among the pastoralist tribes. Even at the age of 46, many elderly persons view her as a child who should not be entrusted with leadership responsibility.

“Today I accept that I am a child according to their perceptions. But I tell them that to be a leader –to be a member of parliament – is to be a servant. And whom do you send to be a servant? You don’t send a grown up, you send a child,” she says.

(She was referring to that fact that in most African cultures it is believed that it is easy to send a child to perform a task rather than an adult because a child is presumed submissive and easy to send.)

Kuka agrees and told IPS most times male politicians used the female genital mutilation and male patriarchal culture to undermine female politicians. If a female politician is not circumcised it would be used against her as a campaign issue.

“This may explain why women who have all the qualifications to contest for parliament find it easier to contest for a ‘woman seat’ in parliament even when they can compete for the main constituencies dominated by men in Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts,” Kuka says.

In Uganda because of affirmative action, each district has to have a district women MP elected to Parliament. This is called the ‘woman seat’. For this seat, women compete with only fellow women. But a woman can compete for a constituency on the county level where she will compete with men as well.

But in areas were female genital mutilation is wide-spread, like the districts of Kapchorwa and Bukwo, women prefer to contest for the ‘woman seat’ rather than competing for constituencies to tussle it out with men.

Gertrude Kulany, also a former MP, says banning the practice through the law alone may not be the answer. She tells IPS that there should be affirmative action aimed at increasing girl-child education so that young girls themselves were educated enough to refuse to undergo the practice.

“I’m one of the lucky ones who escaped the practice because I had support from my parents. Most of my contemporaries went through it because every girl in the village who attained puberty had to be initiated into womanhood through circumcision.”

She explains that the issue of female genital mutilation used to come up at every campaign and she had to tell people the facts about it.

She adds that even women were prejudiced against women who had not undergone female circumcision. “Even some women have been discouraged from voting for women who have not gone through female genital mutilation. (It is) because they have been made to accept the (belief) that a woman who has not been circumcised is not yet mature,” Kulany says.

Baryomunsi expects the bill to win the two-thirds support needed for its passage and for it to become law. Public hearings are yet to be held in Parliament but several MPs have already committed themselves to support its enactment into law.

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In other parts of the world cruelty such as this is rampant and little did we know we are living with one of the victims.