Traditional Cleansing Rituals Where The Disabled Women Were Used

In many African communities, there were a lot of rituals that were carried out in relation to issues revolving around marriage. In an interview carried out to elderly woman from one community in Kenya, she gave some of the rituals that were one to a disabled woman and those that were done using a disabled woman as a sacrifice for the rituals. This is what that lady had to share in that enriching interview.

In the our culture, it was a taboo for a man to die without having gotten married. In case a man died as a bachelor some rituals had to be performed before he was buried, a disabled woman could be brought and made to have a sexual intercourse with that corpse then it was ready enough to get buried. For a disabled woman who died before getting married, she was not allowed to be buried in the homestead, the body would be buried outside the compound. This was done to signify that she was not supposed to still be living in her parents home at that age according to our society, people were categorized and there are those who were looked at as mere objects or less humans. Just like objects can be used for various sacrificial exercises, those human who are seen as objects were also treated like objects and they were used for purposes of cultural practices. The disabled women are a good example here. Africans do value human life, but to them life is of those who are without any form of deformity.

it is so inhuman for any one or a group of people whether be it a respected society or who, to use human beings in some rituals like the disabled women were being used in rituals of cleansing the dead among the community. The dead is so much respected and a dead person is handled with a lot of awe, this sees to it that there has been a disconnection between the dead and the living, this is why when someone dies, he or she is not mixed again with the living, the body is handled separately and it cannot even be placed to sleep in the house where that person used to sleep. It is therefore very odd to find that in some communities, the disabled women are used to cleanse a dead man’s body. This is a very serious form of disrespect to the disabled women, likening a disabled woman to a dead body by taking her to sleep with a dead body is way of denying them their full human rights.