Following his
pleasant discovery earlier in the day, Hueze Huesu, in his 50s, couldn’t
wait to get home later that night. He felt like a school boy preparing
for a first date. He was excited about exploring the world of s*x with a
‘rubber. “Nobody had told me about c*ndoms until I heard from some
people that it prevents pregnancy and s*xually transmitted
diseases(STD),” he said. However, his excitement was deflated when he
tried to explore. He wanted to enjoy his new discovery with one of his
wives t night. He said, “For the first time, I tried to use it when I
wanted to sleep with my wife but she bluntly refused. She said she was
not a prostitute and queried why I wanted to use a c*ndom when we have
been married for years and never used one.” Since then, Huese, who has
10 children, has never tried to use a c*ndom with any of his two wives.
“I have never believed in the use of c*ndoms anyway. This has not
stopped me from having s*x regularly. The woman knows the sign when the
man is about to ejaculate or reach orgasm. So she has already even
enjoyed it more than the man before he withdraws,” noted Huese
animatedly.
The use of c*ndoms
is strange to men in Makoko, a densely populated slum town in Lagos
where majority live in wooden shacks built on water. Like Huese, many
Egun people in Makoko, as well as Oko-Agbon and Ago-Egun communities in
Yaba Local Council Development Area, Lagos, do not like using c*ndoms
due to their long held traditional belief in the old practice of coitus
interruptus, also known as the withdrawal or pull-out method during
s*xual intercourse. For centuries, this has been used as a method of
birth control worldwide. The history is not lost on the Egun people
whose forefathers migrated from neighbouring Francophone West African
countries like Togo and Benin Republic, as well as from Badagry, Lagos.
This age old practice has been transferred to the current generation,
where most of the people speak their local Egun dialect and sometimes
French. Their major occupations are fishing and farming. Only a few
understand English and the residents, whose maj live in wooden shacks
built on murky waters oozing with an unpleasant odour.
“The use of c*ndom
means nothing for us here as Egun people. We don’t like using c*ndoms
because we know ourselves, both women and men; we don’t go outside or
sleep around. It’s those people who go outside sleeping with different
people that contact such diseases like HIV,” said Lowato Luke, one of
the traditional chiefs in the area. Luke, who has two wives and 12
children, gleefully boasted that he had mastered the withdrawal method
and understands his wives’ ovulation cycles. “I know the particular
times to have s*x with my wives, even if they are breastfeeding and I
want to have s*x with them, I know how to do it to prevent another
pregnancy,” he said. Like Huese, he also claimed that his wives enjoy
the s*x more than he does. “But if you use c*ndom, it won’t be that
enjoyable. I have never used a c*ndom,” he noted.
It is the same case
with Kirianko Goi, in his 40s. “I don’t believe in the use of c*ndom
because I never heard that from my father. It’s not for me to say
whether I will advise my children to use c*ndom or not. If the young
boys and girls want to have s*x, they won’t tell you. This generation is
clearly different from that of my father and mine. But if I’m in a
position to do so, I will advise them, it is my duty to advise them,” he
said.
Goi’s nephews, two
young men in their 20s, one married and the other unmarried, giggled
intermittently during their uncle’s brief condóm talk. But they declined
comments when asked if they use c*ndoms during s*x. Many of the men who
spoke to our correspondent in the community expressed their aversion to
the use of c*ndoms during s*xual intercourse and were insistent that
their women enjoyed it that way. Twenty-five-year-old Bernadette Sato,
who has two children, agreed. She does not like c*ndom. “We don’t like
using condóm. But if we don’t want to get pregnant, we know how to do it
by ourselves; it pays us more that way, because we don’t like using
c*ndom. I was told in a hospital in Cotonou, Benin Republic, where I
gave birth to my first child, that people who don’t want to get pregnant
can use c*ndom. Sometimes, I use a family planning drug before and
after s*x with my husband to prevent pregnancy,” she said, noting that
many of her friends also don’t like c*ndoms, while some claimed it could
bring about disease. “I don’t know the type of disease, but I just
don’t like c*ndom during s*x,” she added.
Pipi Olorunwa, who
has been married for 12 years and has six children, gave an insight into
the female perspective. She said: “Although there is no official report
that says c*ndom is bad; personally, I don’t like it because God did
not create it. Those who created it did so because of the level of
immorality in the world today so that they can enjoy themselves. There
are several methods to avoid pregnancy. A couple can have s*x without
the wife conceiving. “I also don’t like the chemical and odour from
c*ndom because I believe the chemicals used in preserving the c*ndom
could cause problems and is harmful to the body. Although I didn’t get
the information from a medical expert, but everybody does according to
their belief. I don’t use any drug either to prevent pregnancy. I just
do it the natural way with my husband.” “We don’t use need it or any
other contraceptive because we understand how to do child spacing,’’
noted the head of the traditional chiefs in the area, 55-year-old Mr.
Francis Agoyon Alashe.
When probed
further, he gave a timeline of the spacing among some of his 14 children
as proof. It showed a two or three-year gap among them. “My children
are well spaced. Some of them, including the twins, were born in 1984,
1986 and 1989. I stopped having children in 2003,” he explained, adding
that he still had séx with his wives during those period without
childbirth because he had ‘planned it carefully with the withdrawal
method.’ “Of course, the woman enjoys it. It’s a matter of agreement
between the man and the woman. We don’t like using c*ndoms as such
because we want flesh to meet flesh. If a man is too anxious during s*x,
he will ejaculate on time, but if he can control his excitement, he can
take longer minutes,” he explained.
According to
Agoyon, the use of c*ndoms could even have ‘negative effects.’ “We
believe using c*ndom could bring disease on its own. This could happen
when the sperm goes back into the manhood. We call it ‘foon’. Then, to
urinate will be very difficult,” he said
However, a medical
doctor, Dr. Kareem Jamiu, punctured holes in Agoyon’s statement. “That’s
not true. It’s not medically possible. But there is what is called
‘retrograde ejaculation’, where the sperm goes backwards to the bladder
instead of forward. Normally, when a man wants to ejaculate, the bladder
neck closes so that the sperm can easily flow forward. But if the
bladder neck muscles are weak or relaxed, then it means there is a
problem. Some causes of retrograde ejaculations are complications from
diabetes, a malfunctioning bladder sphincter, as well as some STDs. But
in a normal male, the bladder neck is normally so tight and so the sperm
cannot go back,” explained Jamiu, who once worked with the Doctors
Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières during their intervention
programme in Makoko, Oddo and Badia communities in Lagos State. The MSF
team, comprised foreign doctors supported by Nigerian medical staff,
worked in these areas for over two years and established a health
centre, until they left in 2012.
Despite the lack of
information, knowledge, and awareness about the consequences of
unprotected s*x, there is a general low rate of STDs and HIV/AIDS in the
Makoko communities, noted Jamiu, who confirmed to our correspondent
that the people in the communities really don’t like using condóms.
He said: “We tried
talking with them but it was difficult getting the message across to
them. When you tell them about it, they just laugh about it and say they
will try.
“From our
experience with them, their way of preventing pregnancy is coitus
interruptus. Most of the males that had STDs patronised traditional
healers, while the females sometime came for treatment, although the
rate of STDs or HIV/AIDS was not as widespread as feared. I don’t think
there was any difference between the rates in Makoko when compared with
the general population or with people who live in different settings.
Sometimes, there were 11 cases of HIV in a month, sometimes 12. The
community also recorded low figures in malaria and cholera cases,” he
explained. “We have special herbs to cure STDs like gonorrhoea and other
types of diseases,” said Huese. “It is an Egunsecret,” Agoyon replied
when probed about it. This surprising trend may be due to what is
medically termed ‘herd immunity’, Jamiu noted. “When a group of people
are exposed to something too frequently, they tend to develop a general
immunity to it,” he explained. According to Vaccines Today, an online
publication, “Herd immunity is a form of immunity that occurs when the
vaccination of a significant portion of a population (or herd) provides a
measure of protection for individuals who have not developed immunity.”
“I think that’s
what happened in Makoko. The rates of diseases were not really as bad as
envisaged, Jamiu said. Another medical doctor who worked with MSF, Dr.
Valentina Edoro, echoed Jamiu’s words. “There were isolated cases of
STDS, but not high. The number was not something that needed any special
intervention. When the women came for family planning; we found out
that they don’t discuss it with their husband. We needed to bring the
men on board during discussions on family planning, but it came about
much later when we were about rounding off the project,” she said. Edoro
added that many of the men in Makoko said they didn’t enjoy s*x with
c*ndoms because they believed it decreased the pleasure during s*x.
However, she pointed out that the withdrawal method may not necessarily
be effective in preventing pregnancies and STDs. “This is because the
pre-ejaculation fluid from a man’s penis may contain sperm, which means
that the man may still has enough sperm to make a woman pregnant,” she
said, noting that the women were less conservative about family planning
than the men.
“Surprisingly we
also discovered that their children were healthy and they breastfed for
longer time, malnutrition was not a problem. Yes, they had a lot of
chest infections because of their environment and they smoke. But they
were healthy, despite their environment. I was also surprised about the
low rate of STDs because they don’t protect themselves with c*ndoms.
They don’t marry outside the community, I don’t know if that is a
factor,” she noted. Conservatism, illiteracy, lack of awareness,
traditional beliefs, environmental factors, high risk séxual behaviour
and poverty may be some reasons for the widespread practice of unsafe
séx among people in the community. There is also a high rate of teenage
pregnancy there.
Their claims
asides, SOURCE gathered from some of the residents that, despite their
marital status, a few of them still had s*xual affairs outside the
community.
“Today, girls are
getting pregnant more and giving birth. S*x is more common in Makoko
among the young boys and girls. They like it. All they know in this
settlement is s*x. You see young girls of 13, 14 years, who have had
s*x. And when they are brought to the elders, they would claim that they
are husband and wife. We deliberated some cases last Sunday, Monday and
Tuesday. We had cases of rape in the past but it is very rare.
Nowadays, some of these young girls spend their mothers’ profits from
her trade to get boys to have s*x with them,” Agoyon said. Most times, a
traditional marriage ceremony is quickly conducted between these young,
consenting lovers. It doesn’t cost much to have one in Makoko, a
traditional wedding ceremony could cost between N10,000 and N150,000,
Agoyon said. This developing trend may change the status in the
community in terms of population growth and rates of STDS.
This is the more
reason why, beyond the changing perspectives, Jamiu said people in
communities such as Makoko needed more enlightenment about the use of
contraceptives such as c*ndoms, considering the social and economic
effects such population increase in slums areas would have on the
country. According to recent World Bank statistics, Nigeria, with a
population of over 160 million where majority live on less than $2 a
day, has the seventh highest birth rate in the world. The report stated
that Nigerian women give birth to an average of six children within
their childbearing years. “Their educational awareness and knowledge of
contraceptives is very poor in Makoko. I can’t comment on how it works
for them. But if the communities can be provided with standard
education, it will help change their mentality and way of life, because
you can’t dislodge them from there. That’s where they are comfortable to
live in. It’s more of a rudimentary life. They have some brilliant
children where during interaction with them, you know they can be
better. Education is what they need,’’ he noted. Although the older
generation still holds strongly to the s*xual practice of their
forefathers, the younger generation of Egun people seem to be drifting
away with the current of modern times, while in the murky waters
surrounding their communities.
Remi Goka, in his
30s, who was evasive about his marital status, said he used c*ndoms
whenever he was with his girlfriends. Like he put it, he didn’t know if
they had other séxual relationships outside. “But I go for tests
regularly. I have many of my friends who use c*ndoms,” he said. His
friends, whose ages ranged from 18 to 30; Hunkarin, Yomlomnun Monday,
Keyebo Richard and Djisou Honsou, who had his name tattooed on his arm,
all agreed. They all use condóms also. Goka agreed that s*x among young
people was now a common way of life in the community. “Yes, there is a
difference between my generation and the older one because we are more
enlightened about the issues. We have a larger population now. It’s a
thing of choice,’’ he noted. With an increasing population, especially
of women and children, poverty, poor living conditions, lack of
education and basic infrastructure and services, the increasing rate of
unprotected s*x in Makoko communities is a worrying trend, especially as
the general dislike for c*ndoms hasn’t changed much with the younger
generation.“They live in a kind of cocoon. For them, it’s a way of life.
The men go for fishing; the women go to the market and come back. From
what I have observed, there are no special values being handed over. So,
it goes on like a cycle. The young boys grow up to impregnate their
women and it just goes on and on,” Edoro noted. What a life.
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