By Toki Blah
Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, imagine they are in love. They already feel themselves to be adults though both are still in senior school. They enjoy being together by themselves. The physical contacts between the two, bring in thrills they never knew existed before. Both are curious about sex. Since no one has ever tried explaining it to them before, they begin experimenting with it themselves. They experiment with the sexual emotions that begin to surge through their young teenage bodies. It feels great. They feel like adults but they are quite sure of themselves and what they are doing. The two feel they know everything that they need to know about life. If this is the world of adults then they want more of it. Then one day the girl misses her menstrual period. They talk about it between themselves and decide its nothing to worry about.
Life continues to flow by on magic wings. The following month the menstrual cycle of the girl refuses to oblige. Worry begins to set in but they have no one to turn to for advice. By the 3rd month things have not improved and panic sets in! What to do? Where to turn for help? Friends perhaps, but these run away in greater panic and confusion. Teachers? Parents? No way ! The boy begins to avoid the girl. The girl on her part, bereft of all help turns to God for help. Frantic church attendance and prayers begin. Only God can deliver her from what she now believes is sin. But to no avail and her pregnancy begins to show. The boy, her lover has disappeared! She has been abandoned! She is on her own! One can only imagine the terror, the trauma and the confusion her young mind has to undergo while trying to come to terms with something she was never prepared for.
So what happens next? She had to confess to her parents, who by the way were daily wage earners with 5 children of their own to feed. Just ensuring rice in the kitchen everyday was an ordeal and now this? The girl drops school to help in looking after her other siblings as she tries to manage her own confinement. Prenatal care involving medical checkups and advice during pregnancy, was too expensive. The parents just didn’t have the financial resources for such luxury. So the girl’s illiterate mother stepped in as obstetrician –gynecologist and as the midwife when the time of delivery arrived. So this teenage girl, yet to attain adulthood, with no education or skills for survival, enters the scene, as a single mother with no backup support system. She is on her own! She and her baby now have, by hook or by crook, to survive in this wide , cold uncaring world.
The reader is entitled to ask “Where is this child-mother? Please tell us so that we can help!” Well this story is not about an individual. Its about what is happening to a generation. To our children and grandchildren. Its happening to thousands of our young boys and girls. This sudden jump from childhood to parenthood is occurring all around us, in both the rural and urban set-ups. You come across haunted looking girl-mothers with a baby on their back, totally unprepared for the burden they carry, almost everywhere you turn. Salil Gewali in his July 23, ST article “Story of A woman and her Child” gave us a detailed, horrifying peek into the horrors of single motherhood. Do read it.
The question here is, “What do we, as a society do about it?” If we are prepared to face the truth, then as a society we have to accept we have simply done nothing about it. Annually, thousands of youngsters, like the two mentioned above, simply disappear into the cracks of society. Forgotten, ignored and abandoned. Instead of being assets of society, they simply add to the dismal rising graph of poverty. We, especially the Khasi- Pnars, pretend its not happening or if its happening then just sweep it under the carpet and it will take care of itself! Well sad fact is it won’t. It’s not only a social stigma but a social threat that the Jaitbynriew just cannot afford to shrug off any longer. Then to add to our sorrows another sex related threat is looming or has already set in. The Health Department has set off the alarm that this year there are more than 400 AIDs affected babies born in the state. Such is the seriousness of the matter that the Government is seriously considering making HIV/AIDs tests mandatory before official marriages. And rightly so! AIDs has the history of wiping out entire communities in Africa. Can a tiny miniscule tribal community like ours take a chance on this deadly virus? I guess not.
The intention of the Government here is welcome but what about live-in couples or teenagers practicing unprotected sex? Can we as a society afford to continue pretending that these things are not happening? This is not a call for stigmatizing anybody. Instead it is a call for Khasi Pnar society to start seriously thinking about an issue that holds such a threat to our very survival as a community.
Its now very clear that we just can’t allow uninformed children experimenting with sex. Its too, too dangerous! Not only for them but for society as a whole. So is Sex Education, at the family level or school level, the answer to our anxieties? Many recoil from the idea and the reason for this is not far to seek. In the Khasi-Pnar dialect we have no biological terminology or specialized vocabulary for sexual organs. The words we tag our sexual organs or the sex act itself are also used as curse words with obscene overtones. Words we hesitate or shy away from using in polite conversations let alone express in front of our children or young ones. The main reason perhaps for Khasi society to oppose the introduction of Sex Education in the classroom. The main reason that it prevents parents from discussing and preparing their adolescent wards about adulthood.
Sermons in Khasi also prevent the Church perhaps from taking the bull by the horns. The best the pulpit has so far pronounced is that “premarital sex is a sin”. Youngsters out of sheer curiosity then turn to social media for better graphic demonstration on the subject, and there’s nothing you can do about it. However, trouble with social media is that while it vividly and unabashedly demonstrates the sex act it does not teach about the consequences, the end result and the responsibilities that can arise. It is here that teenage experiments with sex usually stumble and falter and ultimately lead to the unfortunate outcomes mentioned above. Taken however from a different perspective, it is this aspect perhaps that can provide us with the answers we seek.
Now if society is not prepared for Sex Education at the school level , there’s little sense in pushing for it. We will encounter only a brick wall. However I tend to believe that no one will oppose a strong push to create awareness on the consequences and responsibility that early pregnancies and teenage parenthood are likely to cause. Teenage pregnancies and abandoned single mothers are fast becoming social liabilities that to consider it a taboo to speak about them is not only shirking social responsibility but a sin against the child itself. Teenagers however will continue to be curious about sex. Can’t stop that. What they need is to be aware of where to draw the line. Well if teaching the curious about sex is not acceptable can we get round the problem in another way? How about counseling the sexually curious teenager? Now counseling or “Ban sneng ban kraw” is genetically wired into our blood as Khasis. As elders we counsel by making them aware about the consequences and responsibilities that come if a red line in sex is crossed. It’s a culturally comfortable learning platform for both the counselor and the counselled.
Our youth are not dumb. By class nine or ten they would already have formed a nucleus of an idea of what they want out of life and what they want to be. Being poor, unemployed, needy, destitute and single mothers is definitely not part of that design. Pointing therefore to the negative impact unplanned parenthood will have on their plans can help them keep within the red line mentioned above. This perhaps is the role which parents, teachers and the pulpit can actively take part without resorting to usage of uncomfortable words and expressions. Lets keep in mind that “Prevention is always better than cure”. Counseling will simply consist of wise elders passing on wisdom to a younger generation. Culturally acceptable and its our duty as elders to prevent our future generations from disappearing into the unforgiving cracks of modern society.