NSANJE (Malawi Democrat) -Malawian woman has made a confension that she was hired to perform sex with 82 men and was paid K3,000 ($17) for the week-long exercise.
Accoridng to a pulished story in the Nation on Sunday, Emma Tembo, 35, from Nsanje district said she was hired to have sex with men who had lost their wives for a week.
This she said was part of the death cleansing ritual called “kulowa kufa” (widow inheritance) which is common in Nsanje district.
Accoridg to Mr Simon Sikwese, director of Pakachere, Kulowa Kufa is a practice where a woman deceased wife is forced to have sex with a man after she loses a husband. It is a cleansing ritual.
“The belief is that if she doesn’t do that, the whole village will perish,” said Sikwese.
Emma, lives at Ndamera Village, T/A Ndamera in Nsanje, contracted the deadly HIV because of the practise but she is now married to a fellow HIV positive man.
She has since stopped the business and is concentrating in looking after two children, a 14-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.
“To be honest, I did not enjoy the sex I had with the 82 men because I was doing it as part of our culture and a source of livelihood,” said Tembo to the newsapaper.
But she urges men she had slept with to go and hav HIV test.
TEMBOMalawians have been urging the human rights campaigners to go to Chikwawa and Nsanje Districts to sensitise women about their rights and challenge Kulowa Kufa practise.
