Last Saturday, demonstrations in Nairobi, Mombasa and in the country's major county capitals, organised by women's rights associations, brought together many Kenyans and also Kenyans of all ages and social classes. Even in the country whose stories we are telling you, and not only those of our compatriots, to give you a deeper understanding of the world you are approaching, a single cry of alarm was raised loudly against the growing phenomenon of feminicides.

Since the beginning of the year, every day there has been at least one case of extreme violence against a woman, and if the terrible average is sadly reminiscent of the Italian one, the dynamics that make cases and victims increase, open up disturbing scenarios on the society of a nation that has embarked on an unquestionable economic and social development, without, however, having thought too much about starting from the cultural foundations and 'modernising' certain ancient mental architectures. 
In the early days of the year, in an Airbnb in one of Nairobi's modern residential districts, the lifeless body of a well-known Kenyan influencer was found, the young and buxom Starlet Wahu, niece of a well-known social preacher (a profession that, like Youtube evangelists, is very popular in Kenya). Cameras at the residence enabled investigators to identify a certain John Matara as the person who had entered the flat with the influencer.

Once arrested and brought to the local headlines, Matara was recognised by several other women as a kind of extortionist playboy. He organised gallant dates and then blackmailed his victims, especially after he had harassed them, tied them up or forced them into special relationships and filmed them.
Still in the sphere of blackmail, two Nigerian citizens are under investigation for the gruesome execution of 20-year-old university student Rita Waeni on the outskirts of Nairobi.
They allegedly even demanded a ransom from the family, before strangling the young woman, cutting her into pieces and locking her in a rubbish bag, after decapitating her. Her head was found in a dam, a few kilometres from the crime scene.

These are the most striking facts that have been covered by the Kenyan media for days, linking dozens of other killings of women that have taken place in a desolately 'traditional' manner: family quarrels, jealousy dramas, sexual assaults that ended badly, paedophilia or child molestation. To which is added another dynamic that the macho African society, combined with endemic poverty, brings to the surface: money matters. It is from the latter that much domestic violence is generated: the husband accuses his wife of mismanaging the little savings, especially at dinnertime when she returns from work. Woe betide if, compared to the small change used to buy medicine for the children or pay a school fee, the portion of porridge is reduced. This is one of Kenya's aggravating factors: on the one hand there is a developing country, which looks to the West, surfs the Internet and absorbs the massified culture, and on the other hand there is the former Third World where so many customs are still ingrained and are the daughters of a one-way family upbringing, tribalism and the law of the strongest. Out of the mixture of this confusing middle period comes a post-war Italian neo-realism scenario, combined with certain iconography from black Africa.

Today, more than ever, it is time to build a new narrative of the female role in Kenya, but not only for the overbearing and frustrated male gender, also and especially for the new generations of women-.
As part of a major initiative of our cooperation in Kenya to raise awareness among Kenyans and especially the lower middle class about gender-based violence, the Nairobi office of AICS produced and had a theatre company from the Nairobi slums stage a play that told the children of a suburban school about the subculture and malpractices of men's abuse of their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters, and how, with the alibi and sometimes reasonable resignation of not being able to do otherwise, they try to take advantage of it.

It is from the school, from the family unit, from community initiatives that we should start. Leaving aside for once the dictatorship of money, and thinking about life, which is love and sharing.
A lesson that the Africa of wars, abuses, slavery and colonisation has always managed to dispense. And in this the woman has always been at the centre of everything.