In some remote southern regions of Malawi, it’s traditional for girls to be made to have sex with a paid sex worker known as a “hyena” once they reach puberty. The act is not seen by village elders as rape, but as a form of ritual “cleansing”. However, as Ed Butler reports, it has the potential to be the opposite of cleansing – a way of spreading disease.
I meet Eric Aniva in the dusty yard of his three-room shack in Nsanje district in southern Malawi. Goats and chickens graze in the dirt outside. Wearing a grimy green shirt, and walking with a pronounced limp (he’s been lame in one leg since birth, he says), he greets me enthusiastically. He seems to like the idea of media attention.
Aniva is by all accounts the pre-eminent “hyena” in this village. It’s a traditional title given to a man hired by communities in several remote parts of southern Malawi to provide what’s called sexual “cleansing”. If a man dies, for example, his wife is required by tradition to sleep with Aniva before she can bury him. If a woman has an abortion, again sexual cleansing is required.
And most shockingly, here in Nsanje, teenage girls, after their first menstruation, are made to have sex over a three-day period, to mark their passage from childhood to womanhood. If the girls refuse, it’s believed, disease or some fatal misfortune could befall their families or the village as a whole.
“Most of those I have slept with are girls, school-going girls,” Aniva tells me.
“Some girls are just 12 or 13 years old, but I prefer them older. All these girls find pleasure in having me as their hyena. They actually are proud and tell other people that this man is a real man, he knows how to please a woman.”
Despite his boasts, several girls I meet in a nearby village express aversion to the ordeal they’ve had to go through.
“There was nothing else I could have done. I had to do it for the sake of my parents,” one girl, Maria, tells me. “If I’d refused, my family members could be attacked with diseases – even death – so I was scared.”
They tell me that all their female friends were made to have sex with a hyena.
8 Replies to “Man Paid To Have Sex With Minors”
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This is just nonsense, evil, filth this should be outlawed. Outdated stupid behavior which violates women’s right.
If you have nothing to say better keep quiet to yourself. Coz it is “Good people like you who will stand aside and let Evilness Prevail.” Evilness is evilness – whether in your culture or another culture. Some cultures embrace evil practices – and can we stand aside and say “Because this their culture?” NO. This is a Global Village now, no country lives in isolation, no culture lives in isolation. This practice is bad. Period. If you are saying this has nothing to do with you – then those Moslems (in the form of ISIS) can go ahead and kill because it is their culture? And you, because you have nothing to do about it (since it is not your culture) – it is not wrong in your eyes? Ndatsamwa stereki. If I had the time I would have given you a full lecture. Nxaa. Haikona kutadza kutaura mhani.
some traditions are never meant to see the light of day……they just perpetuate pain and suffering illness and demise….mired in confusion self seeking behaviours that developed into damging traditions
some traditions are never meant to see the light of day……they just perpetuate pain and suffering illness and demise….mired in confusion self seeking behaviours that developed into damging traditions
That hyena actually looks ill. Shame on tradition. What will become of this generation of HIV and AIDS. Lord have mecry.
That hyena actually looks ill. Shame on tradition. What will become of this generation of HIV and AIDS. Lord have mecry.
Well, who am i to judge other people’s traditions and culture??
Well, who am i to judge other people’s traditions and culture??