How Safe are Safe Days, anyway?

Asha knew that something was terribly wrong. She had spent the first and second month trying to come to grips with it and gathering the courage she needed to approach the campus medical officer.  But how could things go so askew? Hadn’t she only had it in the safe confinement of her safe days? Or how safe were the safe days, anyway?

How safe are the safe days, anyway?

Knowing she was going to be sexually active, Asha had taken the liberty to educate herself on some basics of sex education. She read biology books and consulted friends. They shared to her a plethora of family planning methods she would use to beat the ova at its own game. She didn’t care about infections, or what other worse infection could she contract other than the one she already had?
A love inspects the distorted promise.
Among all the major FP advice she received, the one on safe days sounded ok and she had chosen to stick with it. And had she been faithful to her safe days! Didn’t matter what a guy promised or threatened, she wasn’t going to let her guard down during her unsafe days. But here she was now, two months into her freshman year and very pregnant already, the pregnancy edging towards its first trimester, and her towards the periphery of the insanity cliff. She was losing her mind, and there was no one to help her salvage it. For once, she wished that she at least maintained a constant boyfriend, she would go crying on his broad shoulders. He would pat her back and tell her everything would be ok. That he would take responsibility. That…that… Anything but this loneliness she felt at her most needful hour.

But all the men she had known in her life were monumental pricks. Most of them cared for nothing other than their thrust and release into a warm receptacle. It was a curse she had inherited from her father who she never knew but who she suspected might have hit the door frame the moment his disgusting seed hit her mother’s teenage fallopian tubes. Only that there had been no door frame to hit. According to what she had gathered, her mother had been a street urchin, was never married, and probably got raped by some bastardly urchin. She had then given her to catholic priest for adoption. And in had set what she considered as years of the most horrific sexual abuse any human being could ever suffer. She had left the cathedral one dark and stormy night. It was her boyfriend who had actually stolen her away when the Father Moses discovered they were dating, and threatened to kill her. For whatever reasons, Asha had taken the threat very seriously, and had successfully planned to elope with the boyfriend. Talk of leaping from the frying pan into the furnace!

That was in the past anyway. She had learned lessons of use and abuse, become a perfect implementer, and turned the hunter into the hunted. But she was pregnant now. Her safe days had backfired. Yet she knew she was not alone nor was it really strange for the safe days to boomerang. When she was learning, her friends had told her that true, the safe days were one of the available contraceptive methods, safer than most of them, less hectic and it had minimal side effects compared to others. But it was not completely foolproof. Now as she sat down on the hard bench outside the clinic waiting to see the snotty MO, she tried to remember what she had been told the loopholes were.

Change in climate, diet or lifestyle caused irregular menstrual cycles. She had changed all of them and she wasn’t even sure what had done it for her. She remembered advice she should have used when she relocated to the lake basin of the National University, the use of a thermometer to measure her daily temperature. Testing for sticky mucus in her vagina, Advice which would not help her in her present predicament, advice that was now the classic case of trying to lock the cage after the lion had already bolted. Hell, why was she even queuing outside the MO’s office waiting to see him? What good would come out of it? There was only one solution to her predicament, and slowly, Asha lifted herself from the bench and left the clinic through the backdoor. It was time to act like the headstrong girl the world had taught her to be.

Sex Education in Kenya

We don’t talk about sex in our middle-class home. Do you talk about It in your home? Yes? Us we don’t.

Talking about IT is taboo in most African communities, mine included. Methinks we have even made it sound pervert. That is why when Jimmy Gathu appears on the big screen talking about Mpango wa Kando, dad buries his blushing face in last week’s newspapers pretending to have found something new and engrossing in the Young Teenz Section. Mum bends over the stove. And me wonder what the two are hiding. I would love to hear them confront it heads-on, “Baba jimmy, do you keep mpango wa kando’s, yes? Tell me you use a condom for chrissake! Tell me that!” Ok, maybe they talk about it under the bed sheets or probably in the bathroom. But what about something like, “Hey son! You know I can’t keep you from banging them north, east and south, but take precaution. Always use the wrapper. And try to specialize.”

But we are so African. No. not African. We have become something else coz if I can remember well, our ancestors used to teach sex education. Yes they did. But we won’t. And you know why, do you know why your old man won’t sit you down on a lazy Sunday afternoon and talk sex with you, or why your dear mama won’t talk menses with yah as you wait for dinner to cook in the kitchen? I blame it on the media; the television and the fucknots. What more is there to learn from my old man when Nameless has already told me ako na yake? What more lessons do I need when ken-Razy tells me how I should rarua those uchi? And that other Always ad?

We are losing it big time. Where are the aunties to tell us what the media won’t tell us? To teach my daughter that starting to menstruate doesn’t give her a license to keep her legs at ease for every Tom, Harry, and especially Dick? We have lost it, and we will continue losing it if we keep shoving responsibility to and fro between the teachers and the parents and the media.

Don’t you think we are losing it? Why, for example, does a brilliant lady have to cut her university education short because she got pregnant? Didn’t someone somewhere teach her about safe days, chilling or some form of birth control? Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. But one thing is certain any talk of family planning grates on our daughters’ ears, yea; get into any institution of higher learning in the country. Bump into any hot looking mamma and suggest to her that she use family planning. Watch the look that she gives you, try to measure its temperature and tell me if it isn’t colder than a witch’s tits; she wouldn’t look at you more coldly if you suggested she was androgynous, would, she? But wait for nine months then watch her or watch her friend or her friend’s friend. Do you see that protrusion on her stomach? That is not overeating, my dear. That is an unexpected pregnancy… And do you know what brought about this sad culmination… of course we blame it on the media, don’t we?

Because of the media, mama won’t talk to her daughter about sex. After all she’s is getting everything from that dubious Always ad and the sopras, isn’t she? And because she has the media to define how she should behave daughter don’t want any sex education crap from nobody. And because the media’s sex education syllabus isn’t comprehensive, there are somethings that daughter don’t know, yet believes she knows it all, until she can no longer keep her goalposts secure, and she gets the ‘ball’ and realizes when it’s too late that she doesn’t know as much as she thought she knew, kapcha?

Methinks we have to really really start setting our priorities. Teaching our sons and daughters sex education and all that. Do you have any article on sex education that you would love to share with the sons and daughters? Please contact us, and let’s make the world a safer-sex place.

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Juliani Voters Vs Vultures Hits The Market

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There is something about Juliani's sheng lyrics and engaging hiphop beats that engages even the oddest of audiences. I have seen granny tap her foot on the floor as I play Juliani through my iPod.

Forget about the deep sheng however, and bring to the core that Juliani has actually been a peace activist and has dedicated his career to social and political activism and you have one helluva song that castigates each of the political bigwigs in the country, leaving no room that they may strike a back-alley deal with the vociferous artist and use this lethally anti-political song in one of their campaign ramblings.
This latest video release by Juliani for the single Voters vs Vultures in which he features melodious Dela, and that advises the Kenyan voter to vote wisely, and remain peaceful during the crucial elections periods comes at such an opportune time when the Kenya is headed for the 2013 IEBC Presidential and General elections. It is in fact one of Peace songs advising Kenyans to exercise their votes wisely and maintain peace.