From the young woman brutally murdered and dismembered in a short-term rental apartment to the Olympic runner set on fire by her estranged boyfriend, a surge in violence against women in Kenya has spurred many to prepare themselves to fight back.

At least 97 women across Kenya were killed in femicides, intentional killings with a gender-related motivation, between August and October of last year, according to police figures.

The police did not provide statistics for earlier periods, but according to figures compiled by the Africa Data Hub collective based on media reports, there were at least 75 femicides in 2023 and 46 the year before.

Activists said the recent upward trend is felt across Kenya's impoverished informal settlements, where women's efforts to protect themselves have taken on fresh urgency.

Inside a church in the Korogocho area of the capital Nairobi, Mary Wainaina, 93, thumped a punching bag. "No! No! No!" she shouted, before running away from a classmate pretending to be a male aggressor.

For the dozen members of the class, who refer to themselves as Cucu Jukinge, Swahili for "Grandma protect yourself", the lessons have never been purely theoretical.

The course was started nearly 25 years ago by an American couple working with local residents after several women were raped and killed in Korogocho, an impoverished and crime-plagued sprawl of iron shacks along the Nairobi River.

Shining Hope for Communities, a non-profit, said it had supported 307 survivors of gender-based violence in Korogocho between October and December alone.

A few years ago, Wainaina said she used her self-defence skills to fend off a man who tried to rape her.
Esther Njeri Muiruri, 82, said she found the current surge in violence against women just as worrying as the wave of attacks that prompted the class's creation.

"It's something that scares us, to see young mothers and young women being killed," she said, as a classmate nearby practised striking a would-be attacker with a cane.

--Reuters--