That is an unfortunate and sub-obtimal pattern that we don't want to proliferate but are letting go for now. :(
Lettuce has hooks for after_step and after_scenario, but no hook for after_example. The right way to solve this, given the way we have set up our acceptance tests, is to add an after_example hook to our fork of lettuce and submit an upstream PR to the official repo. 
I have created a ticket in the testeng backlog for this.