EMO CULTURE & HERITAGE

Tumdo Group Photo

Emo Culture & Heritage Department was established in 2007 with a prime objective of offering mentorship to the communities young population in their teens and early youth. The department also covers other areas of social life like family relationships, gender issues etc. This department is run by a board of elders comprising seven men and seven women.

The programs currently being offered are;

1. Tumdo for boys
2. Cultural training for girls

Tumdo for Boys (Boy's Circimcision)

Over the past two decades, the community has seen the emergence of two types of circumcision rites practiced by its people. On the one hand, and expecially in the rural areas, a section of the community has continued to maintain a purely cultural circumcision rites with all its traditional teachings while on the other hand there emerged a supposedly Christian circumcision rite that excluded all teaching on tradition and concentrated purely on Christian Values. These two processes were completely opposite of each other but most members of the community considered their traditional way to be more superior hence causing conflict among the graduating youth. A third process emerged in the late 1990's where parents living in urban areas would take their children through the process but in an individualistic manner within their home (Servants Quarters)

With this kind of disharmony, EMO decided to engage the Spritual leaders as well as the Cultural leaders to try and arrive at the best mode of carrying out this important rite. This led to the harmonisation of the Cultural as well as the Christian processes to come out with EMO TUMDO.

EMO TUMDO therefore embraces all the practices and teaching offered by the traditional option but incorporates Christian values into the program. This means that some of the elements found in the traditional option like alcohol and the traditional alters were replaced with the Alter of the Living God.

This program is run every year in November/December in Nairobi and is currently being devolved to counties within the Kalenjin region.

Girls Mentorship Program

Owing to the success of the boy's program, the society started a similar program free from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) targeting teenage/youth girls. Here the girls are admitted into seclusion for two weeks and are trained on how to manage their personal lives in light of cultural values.

This program which started in 2013 also runs in December and plans are underway to expand the program