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The Luo tribe in western Kenya are following a strange custom of having sex with a stranger for the next three days after the death of their husband. The BBC’s documentary reveals a lot about this forced sexual harassment.
The elders of the tribe claim that this ritual is performed to enchant the wife from the unclean presence of his soul which occurs in the wife’s body when the husband dies. Window cleansing is a three-day event. The ceremony begins with sex with a stranger on a makeshift roof in front of the house. Before the first sexual intercourse at night, this woman should kill a chicken and feed it to him. After spending three days with him, the widow can return to her home on the fourth day. After doing so, even the children have access back after washing the house where she had been with her husband until then. Mothers of the Luo tribe do not have the courage to leave their children behind after the death of their husbands without performing so many ceremonies. This is because they fear that if they continue to live without purification, their children will be haunted by death and disease.
Since the Luo tribe has had such a ritual for decades, there is also a group of professional purifiers known as the Jotters. There are also professional sorcerers who pay up to four hundred dollars to cleanse a widow who had sex with her for three days. Thus there is even a group of brokers who bring in the most expert purists in the country on time and live off the commission from it.
There is a belief that this should be done without any safety precautions. But women who fall victim to this are more likely to develop AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. If you become pregnant from such relationships, it gives women another responsibility. According to the BBC documentary, women in this country have been subjected to such torture before recovering from the trauma of their husband’s death. The women of the Luo tribe are in a relentless struggle to shake off a strange custom that has been followed by their society for generations.