Kenya, in recent years, has been facing huge problems. Some of these problems are literally big, such as the swollen stomachs of our teenage school going girls. The abdomens are not distended because their parents are feeding them well. No, they discovered different type of food a little early, overfed on it, and, like the holy book says, anything done in darkness will exposed in daylight. So our youngsters walk showing, as Kenyans say, the evidence of what they did.
The teenage pregnancy is not as worrying as the solution the government is providing to bring the issue under control. Some old folks sat somewhere and made a simple decision. The teenage pregnancy is on the rise in the country? Good, let us ban disco matanga. According to the government (whoever he or she is), music after burials is the sole cause of our young girls multiplying and filling the earth before they are given an ok. So what is my problem with the decision? Well, everything. It seems whoever makes some of these decisions spent a lot of their time in disco matanga instead of going to school. Either that or they never attended the discos hence the hatred.
Music played during funerals is not enough to make young girls all over Kenya develop interest in sex. Biology and common sense can easily dispel the myth. If a child can attend disco matanga playing in the village loud enough for their parents to hear and prevent them, then it is quite easy for the same children to sneak out when their parents are asleep and visit their boyfriends.
Our biggest problem as a country is pretending that we are very religious. Parents and other adults, including teachers do not want to believe that the teenagers are having sex, although the truth is that they are having it in plenty. Once a child hits puberty, the raging hormones do not understand laws forbidding their owners from certain activities. At this stage, the boys and girls have fully developed organs and the little interaction they have had with the world has made them aware that the organs have other more important roles than simply urinating. A cocktail of raging hormones, peer pressure, temptations, and external influences makes it hard for many young people to restrain and wait until marriage.
There are some countries such as India and the UK where there are no disco matangas yet the rate of teenage pregnancy is still high. I am not advocating music to be played in villages at night. If anything, they interfere with my beautiful sleep while in my birthplace. However, we can do better as a country and come up with a more realistic plan.
The solution is simple; teenagers should be offered sex education. Let boys and girls be told on birth control methods. Promoting abstinence has terribly failed. Relying on religion and traditional values may not yield much since we are busy burring our culture while religion gives an option of repentance millions of times. Instead of guiding students to wait until they get married, give them contraceptives and show them how they can use the contraceptives to reduce pregnancy rates. If not, we can go on banning disco matangas while the young ones continue manufacturing the next generation.
JUST THINKING OUT LOUD 