I spent a good part of October assessing the health education at primary and secondary schools around the district. I did so much work related travel that friends and acquaintances began referring to me as the District Officer(equivalent to our governor). The structure of these trips involved me traveling for hours, many times by foot, to visit with the head masters of the schools. During these meetings I asked a lot of open ended questions regarding how health is taught and how much detail and support is given regarding different topics such as HIV/AIDS, sanitation (washing hands, using latrines -diarrheal disease kills a large percentage of our children here), sex and puberty(some girls just don’t go to school when they begin bleeding…). I learned a great deal from these meetings and the conversations I’ve been having since arriving in Kenya.
Regarding HIV/AIDS. Every headmaster I met with told me with confidence it was taught-it is in the government curriculum. When I asked about how frequently and in what detail it was taught, they said it was discussed maybe twice a term. Teachers tell children it is contagious and it is caught from sex. It was a consensus that not much more detail was given to the students, as teachers didn’t feel comfortable talking about sexual issues with students. Depending on the school and the grade level the biological progression of HIV was discussed. Not the majority though. Social issues were not discussed. Sex not discussed. Care for the sick not discussed.
PROBLEM: Parents don’t feel comfortable talking to their kids about sex. They assume other respected adults will talk to them about it. Teachers (other respected adults in child’s lives) don’t feel appropriate talking to their students about sex. Kids are told having sex is a sin, and the teachers feel they’ve done their part. Condom use is not taught in most schools because the kids aren’t having sex (because they know it is a sin). Girls are coming to school pregnant, consequently getting kicked out of school and sent home to be a mother and dependant on someone else for income and some degree of stability for the rest of their lives.
FRUSTRATING STORY # 1: My PCV friend is a teacher at a local secondary school. The school held a talk on HIV/AIDS and asked her to lead the discussion. When the talk ended, the students asked questions, one being “is there a cure for Aids?” My friend begins to respond that there is not a cure but that there are ways to live long lives after being diagnosed through use of anti retroviral therapies and healthy lifestyle. At this point the head teacher interjects and tells them that if you are HIV positive and you devote your life to God, he will cure you. I kid you not this is what was said. All you have to do is ask God and all your problems disappear. Lesson: have as much sex as you want kids and when you are done, just find god and all your promiscuity is wiped away. All my friend could do was talk about how physiologically it was impossible for that to happen…once again the collision of science and god. At some point the same man insisted that condoms themselves were infected with HIV.
FRUSTRATING STORY 2: I spend a good amount of time with another friend who is a 40 year old Kenyan teacher at a primary school. She told me that now they are encouraging the students not to share their water bottles and things because you can catch HIV…I explain to her that this is not the case and make a mental note about the miseducation of teachers and therefore students.
In another conversation she was starting to say how the white people who come to teach at schools are bad people because they talk about condoms. Condoms are sinful etc. At this point I very politely asked how many girls come to school pregnant each year. She said there were always a few. I told her these kids are already having sex, regardless of whether it is sinful or not, the least we could do is give them some of the tools to protect themselves and enable them to live healthy lives. She understood, she is also a mother.
DEPRESSING STORY: Another friend of mine is a teacher at a different secondary school in a very remote area. Note-most secondary schools here are boarding schools. November marked the end of the school year so all of the students sit for exams. Exams here are a HUGE deal. Starting from primary school the results determine whether you will go to a good secondary school or university-competition is high. The Friday evening before the exam is to start, a Form 4 (senior) girl left campus alone and found her way to an isolated bunch of bushes. A female teacher saw her staggering out there and followed her. When she arrived she found the girl in labor. This girl had gone out into the bush to give birth alone. I cannot begin to imagine how scared this girl must have been, how alone, how unprepared. Did she walk out there knowing she might die. Alone. It makes me nauseous. It makes me cry. This is structural. Education is all kids have to even try for a better life and she was going to lose it if she was known to be pregnant. All she had left was to finish her exam, and for her, this was not something worth sacrificing. Her plan was to sneak away into the bush, give birth and leave the baby to die. The teacher called for help and they birthed the baby together in the bushes. The girl begged them to kill the baby, but they did not. When I imagine this scene, it is too much. This is not a movie, this is not some dramatization. This is happening all over this world. To compound matters, it is known(but not known with enough evidence for justice) that a teacher is sleeping with the students. It is whispered that this teacher might be the father of this baby. The school decided to kick her off the grounds but allowed her to finish the exams. Some of the woman teachers took her in and fed her for the week she sat for exams.
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Here education is the golden ticket. Because of this, teachers are given a lot of respect and power. With this comes responsibility. When a teacher tells a kid who knows nothing about sex that condoms are infected with HIV, they’ll believe it. They do. The problem is, it doesn’t stop them from having sex. They just don’t use a condom. Kids are learning about sex by doing it. This post holds too much already so I’m gonna wrap it up. Long story not so short, I’ve decided that one of the most lasting projects I can undertake here is a teacher training where I will hopefully set some of the facts straight and give teachers some tools regarding talking about sex and puberty with students. It will take a long time to finalize the curriculum, but I think it will be incredibly beneficial. I don’t want to provide the bandaid fix by spending my 2 years talking in schools, reaching only those students that are here for those few years and further enabling teachers to hide from the sticky subjects of sex. I feel it important to educate those educators who will teach generations.
