For over 8 months now, almost every week, a headline announcing teenage pregnancies recorded in thousands in a district in Uganda has appeared in the press. These teenage pregnancies have been blamed on the closure of schools that was ordered by Government of Uganda as one of the measures to control the spread of COVID-19. But is it COVID-19 we should be blaming?
If a child fears
to show up at school pregnant more than she fears showing up at home pregnant, what
does that say about her parent(s) and the values of the family she comes from?
In Uganda today it appears majority of us have lost the ability to
derive pleasure from any anything that is not sexual. The jokes cracked on radio
stations are sexual; the songs topping the charts are filled with sexual
lyrics; the trending music videos have very sexually suggestive dances; the
trending clothes are those that leave little to imagine; etc.
This month, a judge of the constitutional court, justice Frederick
Egonda-Ntende, asked, "What harm would result to society if publication,
exhibition or other representation of images of sexual parts of the human body
or sexual activities primarily for sexual excitement, is not prohibited?" The
constitutional court went ahead and decriminalized the publication orexhibition of pornography in Uganda.
Surely, with all this sexual content that fills our mass media
that we are promoting (even in our homes) and decriminalising, how can our
children not be sexually active?
Values are caught, not taught. And whatever values we as a nation embrace
and promote especially at family level, those, our children will pick up.
