Let's Talk About Sex

Yes, let’s talk about one of the most interesting topics for human beings to talk about: sex. Why is it so damn fascinating? Well, probably because basically everyone has some kind of sexuality. Whether you identify as male, female, transgender, gay, heterosexual, or confused, you have sexuality. Whether you are a virgin, a nun, a lady of the night, chances are that you’ve either participated in some kind of sexual act or have given it some thought. It’s fairly natural for our species. In fact, it’s pretty natural for most species. Sorry amoebas, you’re not included.

Ok, so yeah…sex is everywhere, why am I talking about it? Well, here in Costa Rica, like many countries, including our own, youth can make stupid decisions about sex that result in some undesirable consequences. In my town, it is a huge problem. I have seen more pregnant teenagers in the last year than I have seen in all my years living back home. Granted, I do come from a sheltered world with strict Filipino parents, Catholic schools, and living in the suburbs. Still, I know that there’s a problem when I survey my community about the most common age people believe girls first get pregnant and the answer averages to 14/15 years. It’s also apparent when a teenage girl sitting next to me on the bus pulls out her breast to feed her offspring. It makes me wonder about how many teens are walking around with STI’s since that’s not as obvious.

What’s happening here? How does this happen? If you guessed, “lack of education,” you’re a winner! Sex education here is severely lacking in accessibility and accuracy. Most kids learn about sex from their friends or from experience. This results in a lot of bad information. Myths about sex and pregnancy run rampant. If you have sex for the first time, you will not get pregnant. If the guy pulls out, you will not get pregnant. If you have sex on your period, you will not get pregnant. Kids believe these things, have sex, and nine months later, bring home a brand new human being. At this point, I almost want to channel Coach Carr from Mean Girls and yell, “Don’t have sex or you will get pregnant and die! Don’t have sex in the missionary position, don’t have sex standing up, just don’t do it. OK, promise?” Of course, that wouldn’t be effective in terms of prevention, but if they actually did believe that myth, it would serve them a whole lot better than those other ones. So, instead of that, I participated in a Peace Corps workshop about sexuality.

This workshop was different from my other trainings in that I brought two youths from my community. (Well, one is actually an Italian exchange student and the story of how I ended up with him instead of a local who will actually stick around a while is a long convoluted story. Either way, he ended up being a great counterpart and actually wants to implement talks in the high school. The irony that we’re two foreigners trying to help the community of people who refuse to participate in my activities, is not lost on me.) It was three days of activities relating to sexuality in some way. I would say that our time was equally divided between discussions and skits.

There were a lot of skits. Let me tell you, skits about sexuality can sometimes be awkward and embarrassing. For instance, there was one skit in which I was put into a group and we had to create a skit demonstrating sexuality for different types of sexual orientations. My idea was to have people hold hands – that was quickly vetoed. Somehow, people decided that we demonstrate by pretend kissing each other. Heterosexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality would be demonstrated in a few seconds. Because my one friend was about to die of embarrassment (I really actually thought she might faint at some point), I had to take one for the team and participate in the skit. Then I thought I was going to faint. Basically the girl that was supposed to approach me, attacked, put me in a head lock and wouldn’t let go. So aggressive. So traumatizing. I feel traumatized having to relive it right now. I know it was all fake and such, but still…it freaked me out. Firstly, I’m not a huge fan of PDAs, even fake ones, let alone with someone I don’t know. Add to that a super aggressive female whom I definitely am not attracted to. Then you add the factor that I’m at work and this is all happening in front of all my peers and my bosses. So awkward. It also didn’t help that I didn’t understand what was going to happen and that made everything that much more shocking. This is why I don’t do improve or plays. So, so awkward.

Moving on, the taller ended up being pretty successful. Even when we weren’t working, people seemed to be enjoying themselves. Half of us tried out the pool, which was freezing, but entertaining. Volunteers found time to ourselves to compare stories and rant about the problems we face in our communities. When we weren’t doing that, we were spending time with out counterparts. That was actually pretty cool. I don’t think that my Tico counterpart gets out of my community much. Because of this, he was never exposed to things that most of us have lived with our entire lives. For example, we went to Subway for dinner and he didn’t know how to use the soda machine. He never had fast food before. Coming home from the workshop, he excitedly confessed that he took a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap from the hotel room. I had to tell him that they were his to take and that he could’ve taken them all if he really wanted. It was really interesting watching him experience and enjoy modern life in the city. His adventure alone made the trip worth it. I know he learned a lot from the taller, but I also hope that maybe experiencing how life can be in the city will motivate him to work towards a professional career so that he can live an easier life in the future.

I know that my counterpart isn’t exceptional in my community. I’m sure most kids don’t spend much time in San Jose, eating fast food, and staying in hotels. I also know that they can all probably learn a thing or two or a hundred things about sex and sexuality, but for a lack of a good sex education, may never learn. This is a situation in which ignorance is not bliss. It leads to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted babies. Those unwanted babies then grow up in a community full of parents who had a bunch of unwanted babies, and because of that never got an education and are stuck living the lives their parents did. So, all that I can hope for is that we can bring our new information back to my community and help break the cycle.

Until next time.

P.S. I’m super grateful that even though I had 12 years of a Catholic education, those schools decided to move against the grain and be mindful enough to give us a good sex ed program with a very real world, straight forward, no myths approach. The more you know! *star shoots across the screen*