The Weekly Observer (Kampala)
Irene Kiiza
2 July 2008
opinion
Call it an obsession, dream or illusion but the importance of virginity is back and with a loud bang. More and more young people are deciding to remain chaste until marriage.
Whether it is because they have watched a whole generation of people who had free sex face many negative consequences or it is the AIDS pandemic, something happened and everybody is valuing virginity again.
It is no longer shameful for someone to come out and declare that they are virgins and will stay that way until marriage. We are now seeing virgins up to the age of 30 and above. Something that would earn a young person sneers in the yester years.
In Uganda pressure groups like GLOVIMO (Glory of Virginity Movement), started by Apostle Alex Mitala, Pastor Martin Sempa's campaign to encourage especially university students to remain virgins until marriage, and the project by the first lady, Janet Museveni to reward virgins among others went into high gear and the fire caught on. Now more and more young people prefer to wait, other than have pre-marital sex and all its consequences. And so are the groups encouraging chastity.
So important is virginity today that some young women that are no longer virgins have been forced to seek solace wherever possible.
The herbalists went first, advertising all kinds of therapies among them vagina tightening. Forget the Kegel exercises, senga Mufunza, Salongo Makamazibu and their peers promised a feeling of tightness that a virgin would envy.
Herbs believed to help girls restore virginity are believed to be making a kill, although there are no available statistics and tracks on how to get the treatment since the girls who do it, do not intend to let others know about their trick.
But it is said that the herbalist offers concoctions to drink and some to wash the vagina and by and by the woman is a 'virgin' again. Maybe it would not necessarily be total hymen replacement, but the retightening of vaginal muscles, is a plus for a woman dying to 'bleed' again.
It seems good news comes in bundles though. Hymen replacement also referred to as hymenoplasty, hymenorrhaphy or restoration of the hymenal ring is now among the commonest surgeries performed, at least in Europe.
An advertisement on www.wellnesskliniek.com, a website for Wellness Kliniek, a centre that offers plastic surgery and anaesthetic medicine, says "Using different surgical techniques, we can repair and tighten the hymen to a more intact, virgin-like state. In most cases, the surgery is virtually undetectable after healing." And this is no backstreet unscrupulous facility; the Wellness Kliniek carries an ISO 9001/14001 Quality Certificate.
Where virginity is such a virtue, that a girl risks not getting married or death in the case of extremist cultures, surgery to restore it is the way to go.
The New York Times reported recently that an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe are getting a hymenoplasty, a restoration of hymen, the vaginal membrane that normally breaks in the first act of intercourse. "In my culture, not to be a virgin is to be dirty," a 23-year- old student, perched on a hospital bed as she awaited the same surgery told the paper. "Right now, virginity is more important to me than life."
The student is probably right, because in the same period, a French court in Lille had nullified a marriage because the bride had lied about being a virgin. In this case the man considered virginity so essential that when he realized he had been duped he actually opted to end the marriage. Although a higher court later cancelled the annulment the fact remains that the marriage ended early and the newlywed woman was deeply embarrassed because of virginity or the lack of it and chose not to go back to the man.
The operation costs not less than $ 3,000 (4,800,000) in Europe. With transport costs and maintenance the figure would certainly skyrocket for a Ugandan woman. But if it is that crucial for someone to restore the hymen; why not? After all the operation which, if done properly, they say, will not be detected and will produce tell-tale vaginal bleeding on the wedding night.
Or better still we could keep our fingers crossed for a hymen replacement surgeon to start a clinic in one of our affluent neighbourhoods. And virgins we would all be again, at a fee!
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