JUST HOW DO YOU PUT UP A three-week long photo exhibition on male circumcision in a community that traditionally does not practise it without offending their sensibilities?

That’s exactly what six Kenyan photojournalists will do starting this Tuesday at the Alliance Francaise. Their goal? To encourage greater debate on the issue and highlight the success achieved so far in rolling out the procedure in Nyanza Province, western Kenyan.

The photographs on show at the exhibition and in The Kindest Cut, the book version, were taken over a period of one week in Suba district of Nyanza Province. The district, which includes some islands in Lake Victoria, is one of the regions hardest-hit by HIV/Aids in Kenya.

“This project shows a boldness thatcelebrates the ongoing success of the circumcision programme in Nyanza following successful community mobilisation and the support given by local leaders, including Prime Minister Raila Odinga,” said Ida Jooste, the country director of Internews, the media consultancy thatco-ordinated the journalists’ work and trained them in basic photography.

In attempting to tackle such a sensitive subject, Ms Jooste said, the journalists had from the very beginning to be aware that circumcision as part of HIV/Aids prevention is not only merely a surgical procedure but also a transitional event that empowers the individual and acts as a bridge between past and future cultural practices.

The photojournalists whose work will feature in the exhibition are Ernest Waititu, Isaiah Esipisu, David Njagi, Eric Otieno, Venter Mwongera and Wanjiru Macharia. All write for various media, print and online platforms, but until their training by Internews, had no training in photojournalism.

THEIR PICTURES WERE taken at the Sango Rota Health Centre, a mobile voluntary male circumcision clinic run jointly by several organisations involved in HIV/Aids work including the Universities of Nairobi and Manitoba, Family Health International (FHI) and the Nyanza Reproductive Health Services (NRHS) as well as the surrounding community.

“The pictures celebrate the success of the circumcision campaign, and yet confront the uncertainties of change,” said Ms Jooste. “They actually tell three good news stories in one: good science, proactive authorities and a culture that is dynamic.”

According to Dolphine Emali, Internews still and TV photography trainer, the timing of the circumcision photo exhibition is not fortuitous.

It comes exactly a year after Kenya launched a campaign to promote the procedure as part of efforts to curb the spread of HIV/Aids.

Today, UNAids says, the country’s programme is the most successful on the continent, with at least 30,000 men in upper Nyanza, which traditionally does not circumcise, going under the knife.

Asked why he thought that the circumcision campaign in the province had been so successful, Dishan Gogi, whose official title is Suba District Male Circumcision Project Co-ordinator, had an easy answer.

“Fear of illness is a motivator,” he said. “On some of the islands in Lake Victoria, HIV prevalence is 26 per cent and higher among adults. People have seen that HIV means business.”

This communal awareness helped the six “rookie” photojournalists connect with their subjects, said Ms Emali, and the project had few challenges as far as the host community was concerned.

But the journalists still had to be careful to follow ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from those being photographed, she added.

“The Luo community is relatively liberal as far as nudity is concerned, and this was not a challenge as such,” Ms Emali told The EastAfrican last week.

“What’s more, because circumcision is not a traditional Luo practice, it is not attended by the kind of taboos that exist in traditionally circumcising communities, such as the Bantu of central Kenya.”

According to Ms Emali, what made the circumcision photography project particularly exciting were the attempts by the six photographers to capture the complex undercurrents that can be stirred by a culturally transformational programme.

“The brief for the photographers was that they needed to take pictures that captured the poignancy of the moment of making the decision to embrace change,” said Ms Emali. “In a way, we wanted the photographers to move journalism into the realm of art, which is a huge leap.”

In Kenya, the Luo are among the half dozen communities or so, including the Teso and the Turkana who traditionally do not circumcise.

But many members of these communities, especially those born in hospital settings, had already undergone the procedure even before the World Health Organisation declared that circumcised men were less likely to contract HIV than the uncircumcised.

“The picture essays captured by the photographers in this project make one consider the enormity of considering a cut with culture,” observed Ms Jooste last week. “They tell of hardships. Of the sexual networking around the lake as a driver of disease.”

The who declaration on circumcision, which urged countries to roll out the procedure in addition to the conventional ABC strategy to curb the spread of HIV, was based on three studies conducted in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa involving over 11,000 men, which showed that the procedure could offer protection by up to 60 per cent.

“The surgical procedure, while not a cultural tradition of the Luo people who live here, has obviously gained much currency in the last one year,” observed Ernest Waititu, one of the photographers.

“This is important because HIV prevalence rates in the region are the highest in Kenya.”

THE DRIVE TO RAISE circumcision rates in Nyanza received a major boost last August when the region’s political supremo, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, endorsed the procedure, saying that circumcision was no longer a matter of tradition but of survival.

After initial misgivings, the influential Luo Council of Elders also backed Mr Odinga.

“I agree with the research findings entirely [that circumcision is protective],” Mr Odinga said at a public rally then. “Communities that have not been circumcising their people should go for it, but do so in hospitals where safety is assured.”

More recent research has however shown that male circumcision does not have any protective effect on women partners.

According to anthropologists, circumcision has been practiced since the days of Ancient Egypt by various communities for religious, cultural and socio-political reasons.

Performing the procedure for health benefits first gained prominence in the 19th century when doctors noticed lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases in circumcised men.

Original article on The East African