Why now? Why my Generation? Why so deadly? Questions, questions, questions.
Before I go into the rhetorics you must be wondering what I’m talking about. Well it’s all in seven letters (eight characters); HIV/AIDS
It is my generation that grew up watching cable TV, satellite TV, the internet and what have you. It is also my generation that has the highest Hollywood bombardment of all time. The tough-looking Casanova, the randy high profile guy, the rich girl that likes to get her freak on; we’ve seen them all. The singles bars, the brothels, the strip joints were what our young minds were fed with as the norm rather than the exception. Our minds were collectively gang-raped by glitters of the make believe world created by wealth and fame-thirsty westerners.
As we were getting ready to start emulating what we’ve seen for most of our lives, down came the gavel: AIDS. This dreaded silent killer’s profile was heightened in the last decade of the 20th century when most of us were growing from being little teenagers coming into the late teens and early adulthood with the statistic that over 4 million Nigerians have this disease.
Abstinence, they say, is the only cure for now. Well, thanks to Hollywood again, we are privileged with the knowledge of satisfaction and contentment of old age when one look back at his achievement. Some youths wants to feel this joy and satisfaction so they are abstaining from fornication and instead pursuing their future goals by concentrating on their studies, either formal or informal.
But this has its price. Due to the fact that we have to behave in a different way to the way we’ve been made to think, most youths feel deprived of the “good things” of life. Feeling of this deprivation can led to various reactions in a person’s life. In this case, it has started rearing many ugly heads.
Chief among these is sexual perversion. Sexual behaviours alien to our culture has found its way into our society and are now practised at an alarming rate. We now find guys and girls who, tough will not admit it publicly, that are homosexuals.
Another is the addiction to pornography. Before the introduction of internet into the Nigerian society, youths patronised (and still do) video clubs for pornographic tapes. There was this friend of mine who professed, vowed and swear on his grandmother’s grave that he had watched pornographic tapes from all major countries all over the world: British, American, Italian, Indian and even our beloved country Nigeria. This was when we were in SS1! I will not be surprised if by now the guy is already HIV positive because it wont be long before for a man addicted to pornography to start patronising brothels or in the worst case scenario; raping girls.
Now, with the advent of the internet, pornography is one click away. One day, a 13 year old neighbour told me to visit a website. On getting to the website, I found out that it was a porn site. When I asked him where he got the website address, he said he has been following some of his friends to surf the internet after school and it was there he learnt the address. I was dumbfounded that if this could be happening to 12-13 year olds, the next generation, then what we have in our hands at this time is a child’s play juxtaposed with what we will have in the future because addiction t pornography causes illusion, lack of focus and lack of concentration. I have seen adults battling these, most of the time to no avail and if this same problem is present amongst the youngsters, then I see a very bleak for our great country.