i knew this was going to be troublesome for me. i'm just going to vent my frustrations and not pretend like this is something isolated to kenya. this happens in america, too. undoubtedly world-over. this is an overall response to my complete misunderstanding of lying to young women when they need accurate information.
i get it. i'm in a country (and a rural, poor part of this country at that) where HIV/AIDS is a real problem and young girls getting pregnant creates amazing financial strains on themselves and their future children that i can't even begin to imagine. contraceptives aren't widely available, abortion completely illegal, and women's ability to advocate for condom use - or at least i've heard, i shouldn't/can't speak to this personally - relatively low. so, yeah, sure i'll let go of my "liberal" ideas that young women should get the whole story and just suffice it to say "don't do it, at all, it's not worth it". i get it.
i don't get telling these girls that if they are blessed god will protect them from being raped, with absolutely NO mention of the fact that if you are raped, there is a drug you can get at the government clinic, PEP - post-exposure prophylaxis - that significantly decreases your chance of contracting HIV if taken in a sufficient amount of time. i don't get telling them that the morning-after pill causes infertility, that condoms aren't even 70 per cent effective, that if you get pregnant and HIV your child has a 99 per cent chance of being born HIV positive, and that getting pregnant young leads to cervical cancer. these are all, to the extent of my knowledge completely untrue. if i'm wrong, let me know. the worst part was just the re-iteration that your life is completely over if you get pregnant (but under NO circumstances should you seek out abortion). how often does this lead to self-fullfilling prophecies? oh, im pregnant, my life is over. why should i try anymore? why should i aspire to do the things i dreamed of doing? again, i don't know and can't comprehend the challenges these girls would face getting pregnant, but why the extreme scare tactics? the fact is that young women are going to have sex. this was obvious in the types of questions asked in the question and answer session. one girl asked what should she do if she gets pregnant. the answer? don't get pregnant. hmm... helpful.
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I totally agree with you. It is probably very different, yet very much the same in Kenya as it is in poor areas in the US. I had 5th graders this school year talking, in detail, about really intimate sexual things that they were going to do to each other. While talking about it and actually doing it are different, if they know so much about sex at 11 years old, and think that it's cool, it's inevitable that they will act on it soon enough! When we asked for parent support, it was so obvious the cycle that was happening. Most of the mothers were not much older than me (25) with 11 year old children. They placed blame all over the place, except on their child. Students are taught abstinence in our public school program... obviously THAT is working. Come on! Give kids of both sexes appropriate information and options rather than choosing to say "don't do it" and then acting shocked when 5th graders talk about oral sex and group sex. If there is one thing we know about kids, they'll do exactly the opposite of what some adult told them "no" to, just to see what happens!
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