Johanna, a hairdresser in a suburb of Nairobi, the mother of a beautiful chubby creature under six months old, one morning takes her few things from the apartment she shares with her husband Nathaniel, known as Nat, who works for a multinational company that deals with alternative energy, and disappears. No post-natal or breastfeeding depression, the reason: Nat asked her to do the DNA test on her baby, to make sure it's her son.
It's just the last of the stories that are filling the net in Kenya.
Since the genetic test became accessible to the middle class in the country, there are many requests from alleged fathers, but also those of mothers who get pregnant. So much so that the Church is alarmed by the relative requests for divorce and the Government has already been alerted by the proliferation of news stories related to the discovery of illegitimate children.
Some of the cases of feminicide in the last year have been linked to requests or even blackmail by women against those who had made them pregnant, or ventilated reports, even within the family, of violence and rape resulting in unwanted pregnancies. As well as the crackdown wanted by the Social Services on clinics that clandestinely practice abortion, responsible for many deaths of mothers and children, has brought to light also this among the various reasons why women decide to rely on such structures.  Last July, the High Court of Kenya reiterated in a ruling that the practice of abortion in the country remains illegal and punishable by imprisonment, unless the health of the mother is in danger.
Kenya, in its popular strata, has always been a fairly puritanical country in appearance, almost as if it wanted to clean up its traditions of tribal polygamy. But if once fatalism led to the acceptance of the last born as "son of the village" or of the community, today especially in the cities, with well-defined families and Western-style couple lifestyles, a simple test can suffice to blow everything. Because it is one thing to be told the proverbial "heaven, my husband!", and another to have to ask your wife "who the hell is your son?".