Reminiscing Teenage Experience Re-echoes the Need for Sex Education

Life sometimes can be like dawn. Starts with a tint of brightness and by mid-morning, just when its breakfast time, it all looks so bright and clear; that’s our youth. And that’s when we blossom like flowers in the spring.

The morning was even brighter with the sun rising from the east kissing us with a good morning everybody smile. We are then rushing to go to school. Dressed in different colours, blue, Green, pink, white, etc etc.

In our different school grounds, we will sit and chat ‘big woman’ chat. One bright Monday Morning, We sat on the slabs in our school grounds, and while we chat, Ranya the mulatto girl in my class, came rushing and smiling with open hands and hugged everyone of us in the small group we had formed by those of us who had gone to school earlier. Some of whom had been dropped by their parents by cars. Some like me had used public transport while others in the school neighbourhood had walked to school.

Some of us had bought bread and beans stew and ginger beer. While we eat, we sat chatting on how we had spent the weekend. Discussed our home works and how hard or how easy it had been to do or whether we had sought the help of others to do it, considering that failure to do it will result to flogging from teachers; especially our math teacher Mr Martin. He will give a stroke for every problem one gets wrong. He was the fiercest of all our teachers.

While we sat and talk, then butt in the bubbling Ranya, ‘Guess what guys?’ ‘No no no, before I start, how was your weekend?’ She said with dimples charmingly bustling out of her cheeks. ‘Fine fine fine’, each member of the group answered. ‘What’s new?’ asked Marie, ‘You were going to say something Ranya?’ the anxious Amira asked. ‘Yes, I had my first kiss’, Ranya informed and we all clapped as if the 13 year old had just earned a prize on our school prize giving day scheduled for two weeks.

‘We were at this birthday bash at Akwa on Saturday,’ she went on ‘And after the party we spent hours on his car talking and hugging and doing what big girls do ,’ Ranya said and everyone went Hhhmmmmm. ‘We then kissed, Oh My! It felt soooooo good!’ she exclaimed without an iota of regret or shame.

Everyone was curious about what happened next and while the questions were raining down I butt in ‘Did you kiss with your tongue, gnashed teeth together like this?’ I asked interlocking my ten little fingers together in front of the group. The group went laughing out very loud like thunder attracting interests from other groups around us and Sidratu uttered, ‘you little girl! You know nothing about love,’ and there was a further giggling.

While the discussion continued, I sat and started thinking. What is kissing? What is love? Why do people kiss? Every day of my life in school since I became a JSS 1 pupil, I was embracing a new phase in my life. I have seen people kissing in one of the James Bond movies like ‘The Man with the golden gun’ or ‘Moonraker’ I normally watched at my neighbour’s house. I have also read books from ‘Mills and Boon’, Silhouette Special’, Silhouette Sensation’ and even ‘Pacesetters’ like ‘Christmas in the city’, ‘Meet me in Conakry’, ‘who killed Mohta’ and the famous ‘Harvest of Love’ of Naki and Padi.

I had read about kissing, love and sex but I had not commit to knowing more about these mundane phenomena. I had been encouraged to read books only for the reason of improving myself in Literature in English and English Language; not for the purpose of knowing how to kiss or love or sex.

At home, I am not allowed to talk about those things. Even though, I felt the love of my parents who expressed theirs like every traditional African parents. For instance, Papa will beat me when I get naughty and afterwards will call me and let me sit on his lap while he will say to me ‘Mama, Papa like you ok’ and I will answer with a nod of my head. Mama, like a hen to her chicks will cover me sometimes so that Papa won’t beat me for being naughty. Instead of saying I had done something, she will say she did and that will be the end of it. I guess Papa did understand Mama’s tactics and will sometimes just shook his head in disagreement with Mama’s claim.

Back in my school group, Ranya had talked a lot about her kissing experience and someone from the group had asked her whether she enjoyed it, she had uttered a big YES and everyone had gone ‘hhmmmmm’. While the chatting continued, Mabel another of the big girls crew, who was always in charge of the big woman talks warned Ranya, ‘Be careful so you don’t get P,’ she said. Along the way I realised Mabel’s ‘P’ meant pregnant. That’s again sent me into a moment of wonder.

I had read in ‘Harvest of Love’ that Padi had gone through Naki’s lappa and Naki became pregnant. I could not understand what that meant or how it happened. I had seen a lot of pregnant women; especially when I was taken to the hospital when I fell ill. I had heard of teenage pregnancy being a big issue in the society. But what is pregnancy? How do people get pregnant? How do the babies come out? From the women’s mouth or maybe their nose when they sneeze very heavily. I had tried to form a labour scene and child delivery process in my mind formed by my nascent knowledge of what pregnancy was; God putting a baby in a woman’s belly and one day when the baby is strong enough to come out, the woman sneezes the baby out or the baby passes through her mouth.

I sat my tiny self in the middle of a conversation that was so very adult for my teenage understanding but yet I was learning my new world or perhaps the world ahead that was going to transform and become even more cumbersome than I had envisaged. All of us in the group within the ages of 12 to 16, most of whom had had to learn about love, relationship and sex not from their families but from friends and the world outside their families. Some had even learnt from the boyfriends they had met. Young boys whose knowledge about these mundane things were as premature as that of the girls they dated. It was a thing of the blind leading the blind.

During the conversation, I kept asking some very ‘irrelevant’ questions as ‘what does it mean to have a boyfriend?’ what it meant to be in love? What does love meant and why do people need a boyfriend? Mabel the Biggy with a lot of experience for her 15 years popped in abruptly and said ‘these topics are not for kids like you because I can sense you are still a ‘V’’ and with this everyone started giggling again. Even though most of the girls were as innocent as myself, some barely pretended to have some knowledge so that they won’t be laughed at or embarrassed like I had been.

The letter ‘V’ again was new to me until Martha whispered in my ears ‘Virgin’. Within myself I loved the idea of being described a virgin because we have been taught in school that Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin and she was a pious woman and even during my quranic lessons, we had been taught that as girls we must aspire to be like ‘Maryam’ or Mary, one of God’s most favourite women. Every day in school we sing a hymn to Mary and we called her the Mother of our god so why did girls don’t want to be the mother of god. These thoughts brought smiles to my face as I learnt the meaning of ‘V’. Yet I was anxious like all teenagers to know what Virgin was and when I attempted to ask, Mabel bluntly answered, ‘It means you don’t know the game’, I kept thinking of what the game was just before our school bell rang for morning devotion.

Our Family Life Education class was more like a free period for us. Most times, the assigned teacher was not available and when she happened to be, the course structure was highly restricted to issues about cleanliness and the fear and worshipping of God. Hence, holding back a much needed knowledge from thirsty teenagers.

That was in the 90s. Sierra Leone was going through a civil conflict. Many were running away to neighbouring countries and some sought refuge in the west. That was the transformative era of the nation; traditions were changing, beliefs, norms were going through some hard metamorphosis and in our situation, we the adolescents were the object of the metamorphosis.

For the past two decades, neither matter nor time nor space has been what it was since time immemorial.
It’s quite difficult when one think of these things today; sex education for young girls may seem the most blunted thing for a traditional/religious African family to give their children; especially their female children but it’s probably the most priceless. Considering the spate of teenage pregnancy today in our society.

Many parents feel shy or not-obliged to discuss sex with their children but forgetting the devastative repercussion of not discussing it. Most teenagers learn these ideas from school and are mostly brainwashed with the wrong ideas or one sided ideas. That most times led to nothing but serious societal calamities.