AMBANI: Sex education won't work until we're comfortable with the topic

The day we will be able to talk about sex freely in public without feeling embarrassed and nervous is the day we will all unanimously support sex education in schools.

It boggles my mind when in this time and age where texts, drawing illustrations and videos about sex are just one click away, the topic still remains a taboo that is only allowed to be communicated in hushed tones.

And even when that happens we still end up looking uncomfortable like that time when your siblings are watching the 90s popular American soap opera the Bold and the Beautiful – and have gone through so much pains to make sure they do not wake up the whole household by making sure the TV volume is at one – but suddenly the door to your parents room creaks open and it’s your dad going for a glass of water.

BROOKE AND RIDGE

As you all might have guessed, he stumbles upon that scene where after months of being at war with each other Brooke Logan and Ridge Forrester have decided to make peace. With their lips.

A recent event made me ponder on the fact that as much as we label ourselves as a learned generation that is woke we are far off from seeing the day when the next generation will be able to benefit from sex education in schools and maybe for the country to be able to realise its dream of reducing the number of teenage pregnancies and HIV infections.

A few days ago, a raunchy sex video of a man and an alleged minor leaked online. The video was shared and re-shared all over social media platforms and offline platforms, for obvious reasons.

To put it simply years of living an amorous life will not prepare you for what you will see in the video. But that is a topic for another day if my editor allows me to write about why Kenyan men were dazzled by that young girl’s “skills”.

Another example is of private messages that later became public, between a Judge of the High Court organising a tryst with a murder suspect made tongues run faster than the SGR train.

The discussion was not on the fact that the Judge was clearly colluding with someone who is facing very grave charges but on how the lawman is getting it.

We put our investigative hats on and embarked on a journey to decrypt the secret messages between the two lovers of what they meant with the words Strepsils, lozenges and mosquito nets in some of their texts.

Ladies and gentlemen, sex between two consenting adults should not be news. It should not be a topic that makes adults giggle like teenagers.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should all now go to social places and start having very loud and robust conversations of the intricacies of what happens between a man and a woman behind closed doors.

But it is up to the adults to create a safe environment for such discussions to take place. This will in turn somehow compel the minds of decision makers and also law makers to pass bills and policies.

The top most priority for Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha should be the implementation of the comprehensive sex education (CSE) for the one hundred percent transition to secondary school to become a reality.

Countries where CSE is taught have the lowest teen pregnancy rates.

Sex, just like menstruation, are topics we can no longer afford to turn our backs on.

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