 Jomo Kenyatta, general secretary of the Kikuyu Central Association and later Kenya's first prime minister, wrote in 1938 that, for the Kikuyu, the institution of FGM was the ""conditio sine qua non" of the whole teaching of tribal law, religion and morality".No proper Kikuyu man or woman would marry or have sexual relations with someone who was not circumcised, he wrote.A woman's responsibilities toward the tribe began with her initiation.