Talkin sex with the youngins

6/24/13

            Today I visited the last school on the agenda: St. Andrew Senior Secondary School. I decided to change my approach with the school, considering it is my last week in the village. As I stated in an earlier post, I have feared that my accompaniment by one of the elders would prompt untruthful answers to questions. Because many of the secondary school students speak more advanced English, Jim and I decided to ask the adults to leave us alone with the students. On one hand we thought it would help us obtain truthful information. On the other, we were afraid of being misunderstood due to the language barrier. Let me just say that we were blown away by our morning discussions with the students.

            We first asked them to relax and feel at home because we were going to be asking some tough questions and wanted them to be truthful. We began by asking general health questions (i.e. where they learn about health, what they practice in their homes, etc.). This allowed us to ease our way into the desired topics of family planning, contraceptives, and sex – the topics I decided to focus on for a couple of the days this week. From our three interactive sessions, we found multiple trends in the answers. Students often learn about sex in less formal learning environments from older brothers and sisters, peers at the school, and from newspapers/other forms of media. We also found that the students were subjected to very little amounts of factual information. Many stated, “I’ve heard that…” or “Is it true that…?” when talking about their knowledge about family planning, contraceptives, and sex.

            As we delved deeper, we noticed that this lack of information might have had an effect on their knowledge about contraceptives. We asked two questions: Why do people feel contraceptives are bad? And why do others feel that it is good? We were a little worried about the kind of responses we’d get, especially since we have experienced mixed emotions about the matter. Below is an outline of some of the responses we received:

Contraceptives are bad because…

·      It is a sin to use them

·      Our culture does not promote contraceptives because we rely so much on agriculture. The more children you have, the more work can be done on the land

·      Condoms pollute the environment

·      Condoms “don’t help you feel it”

·      The pills poorly affect your health

·      The pills “can give you cancer”

·      The pills destroys your eggs that you have to give birth

Contraceptives are good because…

·      With birth control, you can feel good without worrying about pregnancy

            As you can see, while many students said that people are open to contraceptives, they often find a greater amount of justifications against it than for it. We saw that this also held true as we continued into the community later in the day.

            After the interactive sessions with the students at St. Andrews, the second part of the day was spent in the community focusing on family planning, contraceptives, and birth. The five homes visited were spaced every three houses or so throughout the same general community. The homes visited included families that live on $4 per day (the wealthiest family) and families that live on as little as $0.20 per day. Remember, these are families living on this income, not just individuals. These families commonly grow upward to 10 children and women are often encouraged to have as many as possible. Not many women visit antenatal clinics because of the distance they often have to travel (3 km or more). Considering many can’t pay the $16 in services necessary for birth, it is easy to see how they are willing to pay even less for non-emergencies and preventative measures. They simply do not have sufficient funds. As a result, women said they often gain information about family planning and pregnancy information from nearby traditional birth attendants. Those who can afford the visit to the hospital only do so when they are nearing date for birth (~8 months after conception).

            In terms of contraceptives, each woman I talked to was open to the idea of family planning. However, each woman supported the “God’s will” approach. In one woman’s words, “I go until God says it’s the end.” This again aligned with what I saw in the school. While the contraceptives are often considered an okay alternative, the culture here often promotes that of no family planning whatsoever. This is a definite theme that has been identified during my stay here in Kikandwa, and is one I will continue to revisit as my research continues this week. I’ll keep you all updated as these common themes begin to gather more weight!