Lucy Oriang'
15 July 2002
opinion
Let's talk about sex. Yes, you read me right. Let's really talk about sex. More to the point, let's talk about safe sex. It is something that we Kenyans are not particularly good at. If the latest statistics are anything to go by, it is high time we got our act together and stopped cringing every time the S word is mentioned in public.
Let's take a look at some statistics as we warm up to the subject: According to data released by USAid at the just-concluded International Aids Conference in Barcelona, some 2.5 million Kenyans are living with HIV/Aids. That is 2.5 million Kenyans in the prime of their lives - those in the 15 to 49 age bracket. It is a tragedy not just at the personal level, but also at the national level.
Two-and-a-half million people out of 30 million people may not put us in the kind of danger that a country such as Botswana now faces - it has an infection rate of 40 per cent on average - but that is no reason to be complacent. Unlike us, the Batswana have the resources and the good sense to invest in anti-retroviral treatment.
This is one crisis that we cannot wish away, my dear countrywomen and men. So, let's talk about sex and stop postponing the inevitable.
In Kenya, as in much of the developing world, HIV/Aids is transmitted through heterosexual means. The 700 or so Kenyans believed to be dying daily did not catch Aids from the air. They got infected through sex. Many of them are leaving behind orphans, children who have either lost their mother or both parents.
The number of children orphaned by Aids has been put at 890,000, the third highest in the world. Think of your own children left all alone at a time when even the most essential services cost money. We have children just entering puberty becoming parents or taking responsibility for ill parents. Where are they to find the hard cash to pay for their upkeep, schooling and even health care? And how about their stolen childhood?
It is the very rare Kenyan indeed who can claim in this day and age that HIV has not touched their lives in one way or another. Indeed, there are parts of this country where homesteads are already being closed because whole families have all been decimated by Aids. How many more must go that way before we finally bring ourselves to talk about HIV/Aids in an open and constructive manner?
As the Barcelona conference vividly demonstrated, there can be no progress in the campaign against HIV/Aids without political commitment. And this is where we have failed miserably.
Barcelona proved that work on the science of Aids is well underway in Kenya. The sociology of it has been dominant in the past few years. But we score a big, fat zero in the politics of Aids. It is the Ugandans who were out there making the political statements and demonstrating the power of speaking out in the HIV/Aids campaign. Stigma? They overcame this long ago. Discrimination? It stopped being an issue decades ago. Anti-retrovirals have long been available to most people, including mothers and children. All these decisions were driven by a political agenda that has placed Uganda squarely as a best practice internationally.
It may be unfair, but the grim reality of life is that politics drives just about every facet of decision-making in public life. No matter how good our research capabilities, it is political will that determines how far we can go with all this talk about sex and its consequences.
Until we face up to the political dimensions of the disease, we will not make the kind of breakthroughs that Zambia has made in recent times. One of the earliest victims of HIV/Aids, Zambia now boasts virtually no new infections in young women aged 15 to 19. In Kenya, the rates of infection in this age group is up to 33.3 per cent in females as opposed to as low as three per cent of males in some parts of the country.
Even as we dissemble over the C word and get hysterical at the idea of sex education in schools, our children are getting infected in ever larger numbers. Whether we like it or not, young people are having sex - sometimes starting as young as nine or 10, according to some studies. They are going to their deaths because they have no idea what to do or how to protect themselves, caught between parents who will not talk to their children about sex and clergy and an education system out of touch with reality.
At a time when we have few options if we are to save the next generation, we have allowed the so-called moral majority to foreclose debate on youth sexuality. It is going to cost us dearly. Indeed, lack of communication on sex even between married couples is at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.
I put this question to Lydiah Bosire, a 24-year-old Kenyan who was one of those leading the Barcelona Youthforce - a group that brought 95 young people to the conference to articulate the interests and concerns of youth - and she came back with what I consider one of the most reasonable responses to the controversy.
"Let the religious people talk about abstinence," she says. "And let the scientists talk about condoms. If everyone sticks to their area of expertise, we'll be fine. It is all about choices."
Choice, I believe, is at the core of democracy. Though young people are the new frontier in terms of infection, they also have the solutions themselves. And yet we continue to talk about them as though they were not there. Being young is not synonymous with being stupid, for pity's sake. The Love Life project of South Africa and Straight Talk Foundation of Uganda, acclaimed internationally for their success with working with youth, have demonstrated this over and over again through their multi-media approaches to getting young people on board the campaign against Aids.
Their brigades of young peer educators have been cited as the key factor in getting youth to come to terms with their sexuality in a clean and straightforward way. In other words, they have proved that talking about sex is central to turning the tide on HIV/Aids - but only as long as the information is right and non-prejudicial.
So, by all means, let us talk about sex. Let's not hide behind euphemisms such as 'matters below the belt'. Knees and toes are also below the belt and, the last I heard of it, they do not give you HIV. False modesty is going to be the death of us as a society. The UN Foundation and UNAids are starting a fund-raising campaign in October under the theme 'Apathy is lethal'. How appropriate and true of Kenya. Can we expect President Moi's Cabinet to take the leadership in talking about sex?
Ms Oriang is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Nation.
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