A centuries-old tradition that victimizes women is encountering new resistance in this age of HIV-AIDS. Throughout rural Africa, women have been bamboozled into believing evil spirits resulting from the death of a husband - or parents of an unmarried woman - can be removed only if the women submit to a "cleansing" ritual. Most of those who did not believe it were nonetheless forced by beatings or village pressure to accede. Without cleansing, a widow may not attend her husband's funeral or be suitable for aid from the family. How are they cleansed? By having sex with the village cleanser!

Emily Wax writes in The Washington Post of August 17, 2003, "A cleanser is typically the village drunkard or someone considered not very bright. The job is seen as low class but essential to 'purifying' women. Village elders say the custom must be carried out or the entire community will be cursed with bad crops."

In "Kenyan Women Reject Sex 'Cleanser'," Wax discusses the growth of support groups of women who encourage resistance to the cleanser and educate people about the danger of spreading HIV. Citing the prevalence of HIV - women are six times more likely than men to get it because of rape and cleansing - Wax writes, "The custom has always been unpopular among women. But in the midst of an AIDS pandemic, which has led to the deaths of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, having relations with the cleanser has become more than just a painful ritual that women must endure. Cleaners are now spreading HIV at explosive rates in such villages as [the one she discussed], where one in every three people is infected."

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