100% Jeune, 100% Accolades Merited

My sexual education from my parents lasted exactly 11 seconds. We were in the car driving back home after mid-week service and they were heavily vested in some juicy church rumour. I sat in the back of the car, pretending not to listen as they gossiped about a fellow sister-in-Christ, the lead singer of the church choir, who had been receiving knacks from one of the musicians, a bass guitarist.

It was the most sordid affair and knowing how Pentecostal church-goers can be judgemental, it must have been terrible for the two lovebirds who were expeditiously excommunicated by the head Pastor, a no-nonsense Nigerian.

Later events in my life made not feel bad for the lady in particular. I myself lost a girlfriend to her fellow choir member that she was knacking behind my back. A thin, scraggly tenor who wore a permanent hungry look on his face. I really don’t know what she saw in the fellow. I have since come to realise there is no social grouping were the members give each other knacks as much choristers do in choirs. If your boyfriend/girlfriend is a member of a choir, my friend, you are dating yourself.

But at the time the Aunty and the Uncle in the choir were expelled, there were none happier than me and my elderly cousin. My cousin held the firm opinion that that particular choir was the worst choir he had ever come across and that the sister-in-knacks was a terrible singer. True. The aunty honestly could not sing. She sounded like what Simi would sound like if she were a scratched VCD. But wona be really get to hear the praises she got from fellow church-goers.

But well, since she was singing for the glory of God, voice quality didn’t really matter, I guess. Kinda reminds me of our very own Indira, lmao. So, anyway, that day in the car, my mom turned around and told me in 11 seconds flat that sex wasn’t good and that it is against the law of God. She asked me if I had heard.

“Yes Mommy,” I answered meekly. And then, she turned around and started singing some Don Moen song and my dad said: “Your mother is right, you know.”

If only my mom had known at that moment that her fourteen-year-old son had been the ringleader of the organised syndicate of garri-and-milk-for-porn-magazine exchange that term in his dormitory, she would have crept out of her skin.

Mommy, if you are reading this, I am sorry.

I have never understood our parents’ detachment with sexual education. I understand the social construct that made it difficult for them. Sex talk has always been taboo with them. At the time they were blossoming teenagers, gonorrhoea was the most devastating STI they had to deal with. And it isn’t hard to treat. You get a shot and you are good to go. Mais face au VIH and the ravaging devastation that it has brought in its wake, you would have thought that they themselves would think that the taboo and the omerta around sexual education was something that needed to be addressed on a parent-to-child basis, nevermind the social taboo and other barriers.

To one of my aunt’s credit, she did give me a proper sex education. It was almost an hour-long conversation. We were sitting on her veranda and she had just finished scolding her pregnant niece – a 20-year old who had been receiving some good knacks from a local mechanic. The guy had wooed his way into the poor girl’s heart with phone credit and Mari-Mar underwear and was dutifully servicing her internal engine every Wednesday when she got home early from school.

My cousin’s own mother had been so distraught by the affair that she sent her daughter to stay with my aunt for a while because she wasn’t sure she wasn’t going to kill her daughter over the issue.

But to come back to sexual education, anybody of my generation (25 to 40) will tell you what a great role 100% Jeune (and Among Youths) magazine played in our lives as far as sexual education was concerned. If the effects of HIV is mitigated in our generation, it is no doubt thanks to the people behind the initiative.

The magazine was not only cheap; it was often distributed freely. And knowing that the targets were teenagers, they would put on the front cover, the picture of some American pop or hip-hop star to attract readers to buy and then to read. The content was rich and interesting. There was the mandatory celebrity’s poster in the middle of the magazine, music lyrics, articles on sexual health, testimonies, and letters to the editor on issues of relationship, sex and sexual health. In almost every household you were sure to see a copy.

And did I mention they had a radio programme and 100% reglo school clubs?

Our teenage brothers and sisters today are even more exposed to the dangers of sex and sexuality thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones which introduces them to things that we, at their age, didn’t even know of, and are even just discovering. They reached us with magazines. Teenagers today can be reached via smartphone. It will be a tough job to reach them because not only is digital content harder to produce, but you have to deal with the numerous other distractions fighting for their attention on the phone.

Those are big shoes to fill.

Perhaps what we can do, now that we are having kids of our own is to break that taboo around sex and have open and earnest conversations with our kids when then they come of age, as well as with the teens we know. Not 11 seconds conversations, but full, weekly and even daily conversations.

I maybe 100% not-so-jeune anymore, but I’m still 100% reglo

- Wandji Wilfred . *** this article was first published in December 2019.