by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose
The murder of Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei (above) by her former partner has reignited calls for stronger action against femicide in Kenya. The 33-year-old Ugandan died days after being doused in petrol and set alight by her ex-boyfriend at her home in Trans Nzoia county in western Kenya. This is not an isolated incident. Kenya has one of the highest rates of violence against women in Africa. Media reports say that in January alone more than 10 women in the country were victims of femicide, defined by the UN as the killing of women because of their gender. —BBC, September 19, 2024
Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence. —Reuters, September 6, 2024
My grandmother recounts a game
she and her sisters played as girls.
Candle in one hand, mirror in the other,
they backwards-climbed dark stairs, careful
not to misstep, not to stumble, not to become
fallen girls. At the landing, their fate revealed
in the flickering reflection one of two futures:
the image of a husband
or that of the Reaper's.
Who will warn the girls of Death's trick,
how too often he wears the face of love?
Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose’s writing appears in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Rattle, The New Verse News, and others. Author of two poetry chapbooks, Wild Things (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Imago, Dei (Rattle Chapbook Poetry Prize, 2022), she lives in Rochester, NY.