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Kenyan Women Reject Sex Cleanser
Washington Post (08.18.03)::Emily Wax
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In some rural African villages, tradition holds that widows
must sleep
with the ritual "cleanser" - men who sleep with
women after their husbands
die - in order to be allowed to attend their husbands'
funerals or be
inherited by their husbands' brother or relative (another
customary
practice). Unmarried women who lose a parent or child must
also sleep with
cleansers. Village elders in Gangre, Kenya, say the custom
must be carried
out or the community will be cursed with bad crops. Areas that
still
practice the tradition have the highest rates of HIV/AIDS,
causing
Africans to question and change traditions as the disease
ravages the
continent.
The cleansing job, held by hundreds of thousands of men across
rural
Africa, is seen as low class but essential to
"purifying" women. Cleansers
are paid in cows and crops, as well as cash. They can be found
in some
rural parts of Uganda, Tanzania and Congo. They are also a
staple in
Angola and across West Africa, specifically in Ghana, Senegal,
Ivory Coast
and Nigeria, according to African aid workers who have been
trying to
discuss the HIV risk that cleansers present.
The tradition dates back centuries and is rooted in a belief
that spirits
haunt a woman after her husband dies. She is also thought to
be unholy and
"disturbed" if she is unmarried and abstains from
sex. The custom has
always been unpopular among women.
"It's a custom that must be stopped," said Janet
Walsh, deputy director of
Human Rights Watch, which published a report on it.
"Condoms are never
used; they say it has to be skin-to- skin to work." Women
in Africa are
six times as likely to contract HIV as men, largely because of
rape and
customs like cleansing, in which one man can infect hundreds
of women.
Nancy Oundda, a nurse with the African Medical Research
Foundation,
predicted that people's attitudes toward the practice will
change "with
education, and if they realize what this tradition is
doing."
[Further information about cleansing can be found on the Human
Rights
Watch website: http://www.hrw.org
]
Source: CDC HIV/STD/TB Prevention News Update 08/20/03
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