The most dangerous time of the year is now. Watch out!

Kenyans went to Uhuru Park, Nairobi, in droves to enjoy Christmas festivities on December 25, 2014. While it cannot be assumed that googling “porn”, “sex”, or “mating” correlates with actual behaviour, the trend nonetheless indicates the direction, towards which thoughts are swayed during the holidays. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE |

What you need to know:

  • As businessmen increase their stocks of condoms and liquor, mortified parents will be forced to stutteringly talk to their children about “the dangers of premarital sex”.
  • There are 1.6 million people living with HIV/Aids in Kenya today, according to data from the Ministry of Health. Of those, 100,000 contracted the virus in the 12 months between 2012 and 2013.
  • While it cannot be assumed that googling “porn”, “sex”, or “mating” correlates with actual behaviour, the trend nonetheless indicates the direction, towards which thoughts are swayed during the holidays.
  • Dr Ahmed Kalebi, managing director of Lancet Laboratories, Kenya, knows the oxymoronic situation about sex in Kenya: many are sexually active, but they would not want to talk about it or seek medical services when there is a negative consequence of the act.

Karimi’s indignant reaction to the news that her sister had been arrested for indecent exposure — read having sex in public — was quite telling.

This was not the first time Karimi was having to bail her sister out, and probably not the last, but she was beginning to get tired of it.

“When she called I just wondered where she had been caught this time,” she told me two weeks ago. “On the bus stop benches, perhaps?”

She was angry because she could not understand how the raging hormones of her younger sibling could make her so reckless.

As she raced to bail the amorous one out, it occurred to her that the recklessness could also be explained by one other thing: it is the end of the year, a time when the demons of wanton carnality are awakened in some Kenyans.

PREMARITAL SEX

Sex, that taboo subject in Kenya, is going to influence a lot of decisions during the festive season. As businessmen increase their stocks of condoms and liquor, mortified parents will be forced to stutteringly talk to their children about “the dangers of premarital sex”.

In Nairobi, at the scientific level, The Lancet laboratory has launched an online platform where people can run tests of sexually transmitted diseases and still maintain their anonymity.

And, at the religious level, in churches, countless sermons on sexual purity have been preached these past few days. Last Sunday, for instance, Pastor Joseph Wambua of Heaven’s Gate Worship Centre in Naivasha reminded his congregation about a peculiar observation he had made about Christmas.

“What Christmas is meant to be is not what people agree to celebrate,” he said,” because this is the only religious event that even atheists and folks from other religions agree to commemorate.

“Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, who came to save the world from sin, yet this is the season when married people start extramarital affairs and young people experiment with sex and drugs.”

STDs CONCERN
There are no local studies to support Pr Wambua’s observations, but researchers in the US have found that the most common birthday in America is September 16, about nine months after these rambunctious Christmas and New Year parties.

As Pr Wambua worries about the souls of his flock, behavioural scientist Charles Muga is worried about the health and wellbeing of the millions of Kenyans who will drop their guard this season.

For him, HIV/Aids remains a major concern, as do other sexually transmitted diseases.

Dr Muga’s concerns are quite valid, because as the celebratory moods engulf the nation, as parents travel upcountry and let their teenagers explore the countryside with their distant cousins, and as night vigils turn into Sodom and Gomorrah, “there is a generation of young people who have never seen a person die of Aids because of the relative successes of antiretroviral therapy, so they are not scared about irresponsible sexual behaviour”.

But they should be, because there are 1.6 million people living with HIV/Aids in Kenya today, according to data from the Ministry of Health. Of those, 100,000 contracted the virus in the 12 months between 2012 and 2013.

SEXUAL ACTIVITY

This dangerous peak in sexual activity during the holidays, however, is not a peculiarly Kenyan affair. There is a body of little-publicised scholarly articles that explain why our erotic feelings flow and our hands get friskier this time of the year.

As far back as 1999, for instance, a group of English researchers published an article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in which they likened the Christmas-New Year’s period to “a festival of fertility”.

“The period... is associated with increased opportunities for socialising and a generally more hedonistic approach to life,” they reported.

Fifteen years later, another group of researchers embarked on a study that revealed perplexing usage of Internet search engines during December all over the world.

Results of the study, carried out between 2006 and 2011, were published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviours. Researchers tracked use of keywords that are erotic — such as “porn”, “sex”, “mating” and visits to dating sites — and non-erotic words like “house” or “cat”, and found that the non-sexual words remained constant throughout the year while the sexual words peaked during the holidays.

While it cannot be assumed that googling “porn”, “sex”, or “mating” correlates with actual behaviour, the trend nonetheless indicates the direction. towards which thoughts are swayed during the holidays.

ABORTION ENQUIRIES
In Nairobi earlier this month, gynaecologist Fred Akonde said he receives more enquiries about abortion in February, while a spot check last week among procurement and merchandising staff from two first-tier supermarkets within Nairobi’s Central Business District revealed that, from December 18, this year, condom sales rose by 115 per cent.

Hundreds of kilometres away in a small village called Mur Malanga in Siaya, assistant chief Joseph Ojwang’ says he chooses to prevent the damage before it is too late.

He knows students in the schools in his jurisdiction will put all that they learnt in their biology lessons to practice as soon as they break for the December holidays, and so he goes around speaking to them.

“I know they roam freely over the holidays,” he says. “That is why I have to talk to them before they break for the holidays.”

History has shown him that, if he doesn’t act, things will be quite different come January. One school in the region, for instance, had 21 students getting pregnant in the short period between November and January a few years ago.

“I have to remind the girls that their lives will never be the same after a pregnancy or a disease,” says.

SEXUAL PENCHANT
For young girls, especially those who are yet to understand the biology of their bodies, pregnancy is a real danger in the coming few days as the female of the species is heir to the mammalian heritage of menstrual cycles while the rest of the animal kingdom makes do with estrous cycles.

Estrous animals such as dogs and cats are inactive most of the time until an unpredictable time of the year when they start mating. Human beings, on the other hand, are fertile throughout the year but do not get to mate as often due to social factors, which are eliminated during the festive season.

History has also shown that, even in the Stone Age, men were at their weakest and women at their most amorous over this time of the year.

Greek mythology talks of a Greek god called Dionysus — or Dionysos in some literature — who influences men to indulge in sexual proclivities and drunkenness and leads women into trance and intimacy with nature during the month of December.

Along with the excitement that comes with the season is a brief moment of emotional excitement that offers a break from routine. For some adults, this is the time to explore, experiment, discover and conquer.

NO USE OF PROTECTION
For instance, in a reaction to a recent City Girl column, in which the cheeky, sharp-shooting Njoki Chege warned mistresses that the men with whom they were having affairs would dedicate this time to be with their legitimate families and not them, one girl wrote on a social media page that she had been “going out with a married man, and he is going to be with me in December”.

We asked her, in a private, confidential online chat, why she was so sure her clandestine lover would be with her, and she was categorical that she would have his company because “December provided the perfect opportunity to cross over”.

Her relationship had followed the same four-step pattern of extra-marital affairs laid out by most family researchers: she developed a close emotional bond, kept it a secret, moved to dating and doing things together, and finally accepted to graduate it to intimacy.

“We did not have much time to be together when we started off because of his work schedules, but we are now freer with each other... and he has agreed to share the time between us and his family. He will be with his family until December 29, and then I will have him until January 4.”

They are not going to use protection, she reveals, because “we trust each other now”.

The psychology of that “we trust each other now” assertion is not as simple as the words sound. Counselling scientists have observed that unprotected sex in the context of an extramarital affair is a powerful communication, like a new way of saying “I love you”.

FEAR OF CONDEMNATION
This is a common plot, a standard, cliché script played out in telenovelas.

However, even in this near-perfect picture there exists a human element that muddies up the story in January: exit the sex lottery in December, enter the reality of infections and unwanted pregnancies.

No one understands the very real and devastating pain that often follows the mating spree better than health care providers. Dr Patrick Oyaro, the director of Family Aids Care and Education Services (Faces), can almost predict what is about to happen.

Faces, a branch of the Kenya Medical Research Foundation (Kemri), offers HIV/Aids education and treatment. In light of Dr Oyaro’s worries, the organisation seven years ago started a campaign dubbed Uliza Clinician— Kiswahili for Ask Clinician — that allows health care providers to call doctors to respond to patients’ needs in relation to sexually transmitted infections.

Mostly, the calls around this time are about a patient seeking help over a burst condom, even though “some would say so out of fear of condemnation but maybe they just had unprotected sex”, says Dr Oyaro.

And he is not surprised at all as, “apart from the opportunity to meet people, beer is readily available now, and studies have shown a person who has consumed alcohol is predisposed to engage in irresponsible sexual behaviour”.

Dr Ahmed Kalebi, managing director of Lancet Laboratories, Kenya, knows the oxymoronic situation about sex in Kenya: many are sexually active, but they would not want to talk about it or seek medical services when there is a negative consequence of the act.

OVERCOMING STIGMA
Therefore, he has cooperated with Better2Know, an online portal from the United Kingdom, to offer a 24-hour platform on which Kenyans can have tests of a range of sexually transmitted diseases without compromising their identity.

“I hope this platform will help people overcome that stigma behind sex that makes them even fear filling forms in the lab requesting for tests,” says Dr Kalebi.

“You create an account on the Better2Know portal, you are issued with a four-digit number, you order for a test and pay, the site directs you to the nearest Lancet lab or you ask for a Lancet staff to come pick the samples wherever you are, and then you wait to read the results online.”

So, ordering and testing for STDs online. In the era of digital communication, when love is also sourced online, this is no surprise... and especially so over this “festival of fertility”.