THE GIRLS IN THE IRONWOOD TREE

Born in Kenya, Nice Leng’ete saw the young girls of her remote village receive “the cut,” the female circumcision which is the rite of passage into female adulthood in Masai culture. No girl was spared the cut, and afterwards, you’d be married off to a man triple your age. To resist the cut meant becoming an outcast, but at the age of 21, Nice rebelled against tradition and moved to Nairobi. There she began to work for Amref Health Africa, an organization spearheading the fight against female mutilation. This is her story of standing up for herself, and for the generations of girls to come, inspiring them to carve their own paths even in the face of adversity.