Sex reduces period pains: Fact or Myth? Tales of premarital affairs

Ask any Kenyan parent if their 15-year-olds are sexually active and they will swear on their lives that their kids are as chaste as a new-born.

The reality is, a good number of teenagers are sexually active, yet their parents have no clue.

However, forget about use of contraceptives such as condoms and abstinence. The methods they use to stop pregnancies will shock you.

A report by Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) shows that 15 percent of women aged 15 to 19 have already given birth.

The average number of sexual partners for women between 15 and 19 years is 1.5 and 2.8 for boys, the report reveals.

Premarital sex

The reasons young people give for having premarital sex — despite knowledge of the dangers involved —are weird. Among others, “I want to show my boyfriend that I love him”, “I need to feel like a man” and “Sex is part of life” are some of the common reasons they give. Also, some girls believe male semen is necessary for for widening and growing their hips and backsides.

This sounds absurd, but wait until you hear the methods these young, mischievous girls lot employ to avoid pregnancy.

Jane Otai, a Kenyan community health educator with Jhpiego, an international health nonprofit organisation and an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University, regularly gives talks to girls aged between 11 and 15. And what they tell her is simply astonishing.

Weird reasons

As to why they have sex at their tender age, some told her that they believe: “Sex reduces pains from their period and that a girl is able to dance well if she regularly engages in sex”.

Writing on a blog, she described their pregnancy prevention tricks: “Their strategies didn’t involve abstaining from sex or using condoms. Here’s what they said would prevent pregnancy: taking a hot bath, drinking hot water, jumping vigorously after sex, having sex in a standing position, or having sex when it is raining or in a swimming pool.”

There are many myths on sexuality among youth. Some girls believe if they allow an older man to fondle their breasts, they become bigger and perky.

Unfortunately, none of the aforementioned methods can prevent pregnancy. Dr John Ong’ech, an obstetrician/gynaecologist at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH), says pregnancy just requires one sperm cell to meet a fertile egg in a woman.

“Sperms are living cells and swim up on their own through the womb and into the fallopian tube. Gravity therefore cannot block fertilisation from occurring,” Ong’ech says.

However much a girl jumps up and down, as long as a sperm has the energy to swim, it is difficult to ‘shake’ it off. As for drinking and bathing hot water, the doctor says there’s nothing more to it than wasted heat energy. Is sex that important to warrant every excuse just to engage in it?

“I had never had sex until I joined the university. My roommate was already deep in it. I would be forced to seek refuge at a friend’s hostel often whenever he came over and she would signal that he was staying for the night,” admits Sheila Wanjiru, a fourth year student at a public university in Nairobi.