Hyena man
A hyena man is a type of therapist among rural members of the tribe of Chewa in southeastern Africa, although it must be stressed, urban Chewa do not partake in this practise. Hyena men get hired by widows whose husbands have died, or by women who are recently divorced as a cleansing ritual, permitting them to move on from their previous spouse. In this sense, some members of the rural Chewa tribe believe paying for romantic or sexual correspondence with a hyena man allows the newly single woman to derive a clean slate wherein their old loyalty to their previous husband has dissipated.
Widows and divorcees[edit | edit source]
The most common form of liason that a hyena man experiences is that between himself and a widow or divorcee, constituting around 70% of encounters. To ensure the liaison with the hyena man does not turn into a relationship, sexual encounters between women and hyena men are always limited to three maximum, although the vast majority occur only once. Once a woman has visited and paid a hyena man three times, she is no longer permitted to visit him again, thus ensuring the sexual encounter remains a ritual ceremony.
Mannequin in a sex school[edit | edit source]
Hyena men are also paid by the fathers and mothers of peripubertal, thelarchic, pubarchic and menarchic girls to teach their daughters to become sexual experts prior to entering marriage and are likewise limited to a maximum of 3 encounters. In this sense, the hyena man acts as a school teacher of sex wherein the education curriculum is akin to what is described as a Surrogate Partner Therapy in the western world. In this sense, the hyena man teaches the pubescent girl what to do in case her future husband has premature ejaculation, if he has erectile dysfunction, if he has inhibited ejaculation, or if there is a sexual desire discrepancy between husband and wife and many other scenarios. Practitioners of hyena man rituals believe that girls who have gone to hyena-man sex school are more capable of providing a fulfilling sex life to their husbands as compared with non-practitioners of hyena man ceremonies. Thus hyena-man practitioners believe their marriages by extension are more durable and loving. [1]