Everyone he's slept with is sleeping with you – use a condom”

  

The safe sex message still isn't getting through to young people. If you want the facts and figures speak to HIV Free Generation. They have graphs and pie-charts in colour and 3D. The figures, show that young people are the most affected. The infection rate is rife among young people aged between 15 and 24. When Lydia Murimi first showed me the numbers, what really struck me was the vulnerability of young women.

Young girls are the most at risk and the most infected, often because they lack the skills and confidence to negotiate safer sex. Older men of course are walking corpses because they choose to sleep with young girls because these girls are ignorant. Ignorant to demand safe sex but also ignorant about sex. Young girls can’t tell you if you’re crap in bed, so you get easy release, use her for your own sexual pleasure, buy her a cheap phone and move on. Usually the move is to the next young girl and often to your wife. I need however to point out a very simple fact in English to the older man who’s more than happy to bully an ignorant girl into unprotected sex. Ignorant by no means innocent. The thing is, a young girl does know when she’s sleeping with a lousy older man and she still has sex with her age mate more often than not, bringing you back something nasty.

Her generation Y age mate is also bi-sexual. Oh dear, did I say that too loudly. Did I just kill your libido? Oh shoot! Let me say it again. She is ignorant not innocent. She can’t tell that the phone you got her is pocket change. She doesn’t understand that a few drinks a night are no big deal in your world; she doesn’t know that the crap apartment you rent for her is the least of your financial burdens. Yes she’s ignorant about a lot of things, however, please note – she’s not innocent. No matter how cute she looks, she is definitely having sex with her age mate for fun and with you for the perks. The reason you must however, now more than ever insist on a condom is because her age mate is bi-sexual. South Africa had a great safe-sex campaign a few years ago that said”everyone he's slept with is sleeping with you – use a condom”

Now, to the issue of young men who don’t use condoms. It has stopped surprising me that only the conversations we had this week was on having several baby mamas by the time you’re 24 and the sheer horror of gonorrhea sparked a true engagement on safe sex. How come HIV doesn’t? Well here’s food for thought to the campaigners for safe sex.

If a young man is between the ages of 18-25, chances are he has never seen anyone in real life who had full blown AIDS. Think about it. In the last six years we rarely, if ever, see those emaciated guys with KS lesions and dead looks in their eyes because of the drug cocktails that exist. Ads for HIV meds tend to portray active and attractive people loving life and having fun and rightly so. In fact amongst generation Y, HIV positive guys tend to focus 100 per cent on how relatively high their T Cell count is or how they never even get so much as a cold.

I have a friend who works for an HIV/AIDS non-profit--he says the under-30 crowd tends to look at HIV as a chronic disease like diabetes, controllable with medications. So, for young males, HIV isn’t such a big deal and as such condoms use isn’t really a priority. That’s until you smack them in the face with something that will indeed take their joy and life away – babies and the sheer agony and pain of gonorrhea. If we are going to reach out to the next generation of parents, CEO, presidents and leaders, we need to come up with communication that truly speaks to them rather than to the nicely crafted and sanitized words used by the donors who have no clue what it means to be young, virile and reckless.

So until that communication comes along and the ad agencies aren’t worried that the churches will start talking smack – here’s what you need to know young man. When it comes to how many babies you will have before you’re 25 or how bad that STD will hurt, know this: The bedroom negotiation to use or not use a condom is 95% in your favour and in your hands. The girl you’re having sex with has no idea how to negotiate for sex with a condom – she doesn’t have the skills, the experience or even the confidence to. That means she didn’t do it with the older man she’s sleeping with or the other guy she’s having sex with as she’s looking for love. Young men have sex for pleasure; young women have sex hoping it will lead to love and commitment.

If she didn’t negotiate with the last guy she had sex with for a condom, chances are she won’t with you. She doesn’t know how to. That means you’re either going to be a victim of her inexperience and ignorance or you’ll simply make a selfish move and protect yourself. To hear any man play victim and whine about “..I don’t know what happened; I can’t believe she’s pregnant”. To hear the even dafter response on STDs of “…I have nothing to do with girls these days, that chick burnt me…..” is enough grounds for the government to demand your ID and voter’s card back. The power is in your hands and if you can’t take responsibility for your sexuality and your sexual organ, then by all means suffer!