Kawango Agot is not a name that lends itself to easy assignment of gender even in Kenya. The owner of the name is variously presented as Prof. K. Agot, Dr. K. Agot, or K. Agot PhD M.P.H. and generally people let her go about “reading, writing and doing all that appertains to those degrees” without bothering to marvel about her morphology. That is until her recent interview with a local magazine during which she appeared to thump her chest (or beat her breasts?) about her success in academia despite her gender. Almost saying “hey guys, I am a woman, I have a PhD and I’ve come to save you from your foreskins”.

Agot is a member of the Luo community of Kenya who, as a matter of cultural heritage, do not usually practice male circumcision. Anyone, especially a woman, that would want to enforce the practice amongst them now would obviously be up against some strong resistance and would require very compelling reasons to get a hearing, let alone acceptance. But she has done it with nothing more than a cute string of alphabets after her name and peddling a sufficient muddle of voodoo science. And that success rubs her sense of self-worthiness ever so soothingly as she declares;

There are no challenges that are insurmountable and you will have scored big to intimidate me.

On the worries by local elders that their culture was being turned on its head by foreigners and that their people were being ridiculed, she said;

Sincerely, I just don’t care. What I care about is people are dying.

The tough talking mama is actually not a medical doctor. She has a PhD in Food and Nutrition but admits having had some sort of obsession with HIV/AIDS since her college days in the late 80s.

As I was reading through some academic books on HIV, I bumped into one that suggested a link with male circumcision and it made a lot of sense to me. The more I read books about the male cut, the more interested I became.

And so one thing led to another until she bumped (?) into circumcision enthusiast Robert Bailey and secured funding for her research on the role of the penile foreskin in spreading AIDS. So determined was Agot and her zealous cohorts that their study in Kisumu was cut short because of “overwhelming evidence” to support their contention that circumcision protects against HIV infection.

Where was the Professor rushing to? Or were people dying at such a rate that there would be none left to cut by the time the study ended? Or was she rushing to beat some deadline for unlocking project funds? Indeed PEPFAR and other donors including the Global Fund for fight against AIDS had said they would not support male circumcision programs until the results from the study were released. Did this not influence the outcome of the study? Obviously, no funds would be released if no correlation between HIV and the cut was established.

And what was the overwhelming evidence at the time the study was terminated? From the uncircumcised group, 47 men tested positive for HIV while from the circumcised group the number was 22. That is about 60% less. Interpretation? Circumcision offers 60% protection against HIV infection. Such genius!

Next stop was the Prime Minister’s Right Honorable Office. Raila Odinga, also from the Luo community, quickly offered the stamp of political correctness to the study so as to smoothen Agot’s campaign in Luoland. Roping in the PM was a smart, though not entirely difficult feat for Agot, given Raila’s perpetually devious politics that is about to attain legendary status. Said he;

I know circumcision will raise a lot of eyebrows. But there is evidence that it reduces infection by as much as 60 per cent.

Apparently, in Luoland no one questions what Raila hasn’t. His approval not only helped reduce resistance to the campaign but also ensured its incorporation into the government’s public health programs. This was crucial to access further funding. And so Agot went over the moon. In her words;

In the idiom of the youths, I can say tumetoboa.

Tumetoboa is Kiswahili for “we have made it”. It is exclusively used to express the joy of crossing over to riches.

Not surprisingly, a few weeks later;

The chairman of the Luo Council of Elders, Ker Riaga Ogallo says that he was arm-twisted to endorse the male cut among the Luo community.
Ker Ogallo said that the whole affair had been turned into a cash cow by individuals and NGOs bent on enriching themselves. He claimed that an NGO recently bought a fleet of vehicles and hired a few staff but did not have any structures.

“Our people are still languishing in poverty. No NGO is ready to offer practical assistance. I am shocked that when it comes to circumcision of Luo youths, an organization can import 24 new vehicles at once,” he said.

Kawango Agot is clearly getting bolder with every dollar she pockets by preying on the fears and gullibility of her kinsmen. One hopes she’ll still have her you-cannot-intimidate-me wits about her when the excitable folks wake up to find their foreskin missing for no good reason.