It’s not just families who are fighting and disagreeing upon themselves, but neighbours’ in some plots in Nakuru town, are clawing at each other over the perceived bad manners of hanging knickers outside their residential houses like the national flag.
In one of the plots witnessed by Kna, the Nyumba-Kumi elders were solving a disagreement over the appropriate ways of drying underpants.
John Chege, a resident, said they were called in by their landlord to assist in the escalating wars of what some members of the plot perceived to be indecency in the displaying of briefs on the cloth line as if they are national flags.
Chege said they solved the conflicts by advising all the adult members of the plot to dry their undergarments inside bathrooms for the sake of decency.
However, a nurse in Nakuru West Dispensary, Harun Kerama, on the contrary, declared the advice as very wrong and misleading, explaining that when undergarments are not dried in the sun, the host bacteria may later lead to fungal growth.
He said the sunlight was a natural killer of bacteria and since it’s free all undergarments should be dried outside and not in the bathroom.
Kerama added that in the worst-case scenario the pants which are dried in the bathroom remain dump and that could easily cause candidiasis which leads to thrush on the tongue, private parts and it is costly to treat.
But Mzee Chege disagreed with him and stated that displaying undergarments of adults outside was disrespectful to the neighbours’ and it goes against African traditions.
There has been a notable increase in domestic violence since the enforcement of the Covid-19 regulations, which require families to stay indoors, a move aimed to assist in breaking the chain of infections of the diseases.
By Veronica Bosibori
Knickers’ wars
