SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

Kenyan Women Reject Sex 'Cleanser': Traditional Requirement for Widows Is Blamed for Aiding the Spread of HIV-AIDS (Emily Wax, August 18, 2003, Washington Post)

The women of this village call Francise Akacha "the terrorist." His breath fumes with the local alcoholic brew. Greasy food droppings hang off his mustache and stain his oily pants and torn shirt.

He's always the first one in line for the village feast, tucking into a buffet carefully prepared by the women of the village like he's diving into the ocean, no restraint. He's too skinny and has, as the women point out, terrible taste in clothes. His latest hat is a visor styled from shabby paper stolen off a local cigarette billboard.

But for all of his undesirable traits, Akacha has a surprisingly desirable job: He's paid to have sexual relations with the widows and unmarried women of this village. He's known as "the cleanser," one of hundreds of thousands of men in rural villages across Africa who sleep with women after their husbands die to dispel what villagers believe are evil spirits.

As tradition holds, they must sleep with the cleanser to be allowed to attend their husbands' funerals or be inherited by their husbands' brother or relative, another controversial custom that aid workers said is causing the spread of HIV-AIDS. Unmarried women who lose a parent or child must also sleep with the ritual cleanser. [...]

Areas that still practice the tradition have the highest rates of the disease, and health workers say the custom must be stopped. It's a striking example of how HIV-AIDS is forcing Africans to question and change traditions as the disease ravages the continent. [...]

A cleanser is typically the village drunkard or someone considered not very bright. The job is seen as low class but essential to "purifying" women.

The more we find out about African practices--both healthcare and sexual practices--the less plausible the case for a different strain of AIDs that is more readily transmitted in typical heterosexual sex will become. It will be heinous and aberrant traditions like these that are responsible. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 18, 2003 11:25 PM