Perhaps another topic for which I should apologize, but it, too, has been pushed into my field of consciousness due to circumstances at church and at school.
I was surprised to learn that boys are not circumcised at birth as a matter of course here. Normally I don't know that I would have had occasion to learn that fact, but one of the little boys at church was recently circumcised. When he arrived at church soon after that event (I can't remember if it was a Sunday morning or one of the evening meetings), he did not come to greet me or hang on Dela's lap until she gave him some candy. On the contrary, when Dela gestured to him, he sort of whimpered and followed his mother to her seat. Dela told me that he had been circumcised and was still clinging to his mother because of it.
Within a couple of weeks, the topic came up again. One of the kindergarten boys was absent. On his second day of absence, the teacher told me that he had had "une incision." The expression on her face though, and her gesture "southwards" led me to believe that he, too, had just been circumcised. His absences continued. A few days afterwards, she was asking the children who was not at school that day. When they mentioned Joe, all the boys started snickering and making hacking motions toward each others' genital area. (I don't know how they found out; if "Tata" told them, I missed it.) The teacher told them not to laugh; that they would be experiencing the same thing eventually. That didn't really phase them, though.
I asked Karen if she knew the custom here and she did not. She said that, in Uganda, where she lived before, circumcision was part of the rite of passage into adulthood. Therefore she was familiar with it occurring at about age 12. When I told her about the boys I knew, she was quite surprised and sympathetic. According to her--and she's a nurse--it's a terrible age for the procedure. A four- to five- year-old boy is old enough to experience the pain but not old enough to understand why it is happening, so that would make it worse, she thought. I do know that Joe was out of school for two weeks. He came back this week, but he's still quite sensitive about it all. As the children changed from their uniforms into their PE clothes, it was revealed (they just do that at their seats) that he had not worn underwear. The boys were looking and making remarks, and Joe tried to cover himself with his hands. Poor little guy!
I definitely need to do further research on the customs here. Stay tuned for further developments!
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