Life is Sexually Transmitted

“We are all products of sex and we should not feel ashamed talking or reporting about it”. These were the opening words of Lisa (Not real Name). She was speaking to Journalists and Communication officers at a training on reporting health at Voice of America (VOA) offices during the AIDS2012 conference in Washington DC, which I was privileged to attend. Lisa was HIV positive and she said that she was not happy about the little attention that’s given to reproductive health issues by mainstream media. Her argument was that; many people are not comfortable talking about SEX.  Asked why, she said that’s her mission now, to find out the big “WHY”.

Well, there are thousands of Lisa(s) where I come from. The mention of the word SEX is received with suspicion, discomfort and pretense. Sex has been given all sorts of names such as “bad manners”. Parents in many African countries find it very challenging to talk about Sex to their teenagers. I cannot blame them because, I bet they weren’t talked to either and only found out about it on their own. The only time that many young people in Africa learn about something related to sex is in higher primary when they are introduced to a topic on reproduction. Of course there are few exceptions who learn from parents who have little respect for their children to an extent of having sex in places that are easily accessible by curious children.

This lack of Sexual and reproductive health information gets worse for the Girl Child as she grows older and at puberty. She never understands why she has to bleed every month, why her hips are expanding, breasts developing and why her mother keeps on telling her to stay away from boys. When a mother or guardian sees her around boys (Innocently playing) she makes utterances such as “If you get pregnant, I will disown you. You cannot embarrass this family etc.”. To start with, the teenager has no knowledge about pregnancy let alone how one gets pregnant. Yet none of the parents is courageous enough to explain this. It gets worse when fathers think that sex education is purely a mother’s role. No it is NOT. It takes two to tangle, so raising and educating the children should be done as a team.

Times have changed now, with the technological advancement, access to smart phones, emergence of social Networks, lots of information and relatively affordable Internet access, teenagers are wasting no time finding out about this mysterious thing called “SEX”, It’s now a click away and parents need to up their game. They cannot afford to sit and pretend that their children are Innocent. And those who have, have had to pay dearly through cyber bullying, trafficking and addiction to pornography.  The earlier you take the bull by the horns and talk to your children about sex, sexual and reproductive health, the better for you as they grow.  Because whether you like it or not, they will find out about sex, they will engage in it and it will have an impact on them depending on the decisions they make. It’s better if they have prior knowledge. The statics on Child Marriages, Abortions, drugs, brothels, Teen pregnancies, prostitution etc would be history or close to that. 

This piece was inspired by UNFPA youth Hackathon, which took place in Kampala Uganda from 21^st -24^th July 2015, for which I was a judge along side Mr. Ahmad Alhendawi, UN secretary General envoy for youth, Dr. Bruce B Campbell, Director of Technical Division of UNFPA in NYC, Dr. Kenneth Paik a research Scientist and Lecturer at MIT and Dr. Dorothy Okello the director of Resilient Africa Network (RAN).  We were looking at Apps that had been designed by young people to address the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) challenges facing adolescents and youth especially the vulnerable ones. Read more about it here 

The Judges discussing after Pitches from the Hackathon Teams

The fact that these young developers could identify exiting SRH issues and seek to find solutions for them was encouraging. The choice of the winning team depended so much on what the APP could achieve and the fact that it was addressing day-to-day issues. Most importantly, it had to be one that could be replicated in all continents and used by the target group regardless of geographical location.

In UNFPA’s Executive Director’s tweet, he emphasises the need for sex education. And it start with you the parent.