Yesterday, an article by SDE purported that Eritrean government had asked men to marry two wives or face imprisonment was trending for all the reasons. Although the article was written 2 days ago, it has become quite the hit on social media where Kenyans joked about the matter on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On Twitter for example, there were a lot of posts that made fun of the news
This is Mutua
Mutua sold his property
Mutua went to Eritrea
Mutua married two women
Mutua is wise
Be like Mutua pic.twitter.com/DhP3V75q1Y— Frank (@FrankMusyoky) January 27, 2016
I'm on my way to #Eritrea. Are you? pic.twitter.com/B7LyQgaBnH
— Ahmed Mohamed ((ASMALi)) (@Asmali77) January 26, 2016
https://twitter.com/Atanasi_/status/691646811203899392
The news went viral, not only in Kenya but in other African countries as well (Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa) where guys were showing their intent to visit the country, although as usual there were snarky comments about this made by other users.
#Eritrea offffff ✈️✈️ pic.twitter.com/0YUmdifpce
— ITS DON JAZZY AGAIN 🤍🐘 (@DONJAZZY) January 27, 2016
When Ghana boys got to Eritrea… pic.twitter.com/VDgHGUEQSW
— Kofi_Kontoloted (@HayfronEric) January 27, 2016
LOL! Yoruba Boys On Their Way to Eritrea to Marry 2nd Wives@Gidi_Traffic pic.twitter.com/lb7FLeaLBN
— Glory Duke (@GloryDuke) January 26, 2016
The story generated curiosity about the matter and no surprise people went to Google to get more information about the Eritrean story. Eritrea ended up being the second most searched item on Google yesterday according to Google Trends where it generated over 5000 search requests: This was only second to the top search item which was a Google Doodle. The interest started picking up on 26th of this month and hit its peak today.
An interesting factoid from Google Trends is the rising related searches about Eritrea which are:
- Eritrea girls
- Eritrea marriage
- Eritrea marriage law
- Eritrea men
- Eritrea polygamy
- Eritrea trending
- Eritrea two wives
As expected, an account by the name @EritreaStruggle tweeted to refute the claims made by the publication about the Eritrean story. He tweeted about the Eritrean penal code that talks about polygamy in the country so as to set the record straight.
https://twitter.com/EritreaStruggle/status/692000935824916481
https://twitter.com/EritreaStruggle/status/692008798009970688
The positive aspect of the story is that Eritrea got some publicity and it could have been adopted by their tourism docket to market the country to the world.
