Celebrated Kenyan poet Shailja Patel killed her twitter account last week without explanation. It was the same week a court awarded Standard writer and award-winning author Tony Mochama aka Smitta Smitten Sh9 million for damages in a defamation case.
Smitta had sued Shailja and Prof Wambui Mwangi for publishing allegations of sexual harassment against him at the professor’s home in 2014.
Magistrate Addah Obura ordered Shailja and Wambui to pay the money and apologise to Smitta through the court within 14 days.
In one of Shailja’s last tweets before she vanished from blogosphere, the poet called on the Media Council of Kenya to reprimand the Star newspaper for what she called gutter journalism.
The paper had published a tweet saying Luo elders had demanded that the late Kibra MP Ken Okoth’s widow Monica should be cleansed in accordance with the community’s customs before she is inherited.
“Cleansing, according to the Luo elders, involves engaging in sexual intercourse without a condom with a ‘cleanser’,” the Star tweeted.
That is what drove Shailja mad.
Did the paper create that story out of prurient imagination? The answer is no.
The Observer has it on good authority that the cleansing reported by the Star is required in Luo tradition.
A study published in 2014 in the International Journal of Aids reports that “widows are expected to engage in sexual intercourse with a ‘cleanser,’ without the use of a condom, in order to remove the impurity ascribed to her after her husband’s death.”
The cleanser is often a non-relative to the dead husband. Thereafter, the widow is expected to be inherited by a man, traditionally an in-law.
The majority of widows participating in the study reported being inherited and most widows interviewed described participating in the cleansing ritual.
Other previous studies confirm this custom.
The Star didn’t make that up.
