{Miss Rwanda has dismissed the process whereby a girl who is in her puberty stage gently pulls her inner labia outwards saying that such practice destroys Today’s Rwandan culture.
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The process of labia elongation or in Kinyarwanda: Gukuna Imishino/ Guca Imyeyo, was practiced for a long time by young girls as a way to prepare them to become fully grown women.

Speaking to this site’s reporter Miss Rwanda 2014, Akiwacu Colombe said this practice nowadays adds nothing good rather than undermining the Rwandese culture.

She insisted that the practice is no longer important and calls it very primitive.

She says the practice has gradually disappeared due to social and cultural advance.

Akiwacu says “Labia elongation is the oldest culture in the Rwandan society, but I think as the development comes, culture also develops. For me this is not something we have to do because the practice can even cause some diseases. But everyone has a choice about this practice depending on how she is familiar with it.”

Meanwhile Akiwacu neither confirms nor denied whether she practiced her labia elongation but she knows many about the practice.

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She says today Girls disrespect their virginity yet the later is something with the highest value that each girl should preserve to honor her husband once she marries.

The term Guca imyeyo literally means ‘to cut brooms’ – Rwandan girls used to go out in the bushes in a group, and when asked where they were going they would reply that they were going out in the bush to look for grass, which they would turn into brooms.

Although men know about the practice now, traditionally they were not meant to know, which is why they came up with a respectable name for Labia Elongation.