In Kenya, women are forced to have sex with strangers (Sexual cleansers) after they lose their husbands. These cleansers use no form of protection, so, you can imagine diseases being transmitted especially HIV and unwanted pregnancies in a society where the woman’s opinion doesn’t count. After the marathon three day sex with the sexual cleanser, she has to cook a live chicken on the third day to eat with him. He is paid handsomely for cleansing the widow, then her children can return back to the house. If no man (Cleanser) comes for her, i.e to do the job, the widow has to look for one herself because that’s the tradition. In those three days, the cleansing act happens for as
This widows’ club is fighting back (bbc).
A group of women in western Kenya is fighting “widow-cleansing”, a traditional ritual practiced by Luo ethnic communities in some of the poorer, more rural areas of the country.
The ritual requires women to have sex – often with strangers – when their husbands die.
The men who “cleanse” them are sometimes HIV-positive and do not use protection.
Fifty-year-old mother and grandmother, Pamela, tells her story below and the story of the Kenyan widows’ club trying to create change..
Sexual cleansing (kusasa fumbi) is an African tradition practiced in parts of Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, Ivory Coast, and Congo. In the tradition, a woman is expected to have sex as acleansing ritual after her first period, after becoming widowed, or after having an abortion.
See the video below by BBC…
These widows in Kenya are joining together to fight the practise of sexual ‘cleansing’ https://t.co/FhgtHQ7FE6 pic.twitter.com/CyZnNtSzGI— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 6, 2017
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