Nigerian author and advocate OluTimehin Adegbeye was only three years old when the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) took place in Cairo. She grew up without basic sex education, and at 16 was forced into her first sexual experience by a man who raped her.
After the rape, Ms. Adebgeye was taken to see a doctor by her mother, who only asked whether she still had her hymen intact.
It was. No tests, no counselling. Her mother and the doctor seemed satisfied. And they never discussed it again.
“So not only did I experience this rape – I was told it never happened,” she said as she shared her personal ICPD story during a panel discussion entitled ICPD: As relevant Today as Ever – Join the Movement! on the sidelines of the 2019 Women Deliver conference in Vancouver, Canada.
Ms. Adegbeye experienced cultural and peer pressures as she started university, and began to actively date boys. She did so because it was “what normal girls do.”
“All the girls were dating boys, so I started dating boys. It’s what you’re supposed to do. You can’t find a good husband without dating boys – but don’t tell your mother you’re dating boys until you’re 25!,” she recalled.
'We didn’t know what we were doing'
Neither she nor any of her friends, Ms. Adegbeye recalled, could negotiate much in their sexual relationships: whether they wanted to have sex, how to have sex, or if the sex was safe. The only sex education available on campus was a few signboards strategically placed in the parking lots of the girls’ dormitories calling for abstinence and to refuse sex “because your pride is in your virginity.”
“We didn’t know what we were doing,” she admitted, explaining how she found out she was pregnant after being convinced to have sex without protection by a date who promised her she wouldn’t get pregnant.
Ms. Adegbeye decided to keep the baby, but that an unplanned pregnancy would never happen to her again. Because she was young and unmarried, no doctor was willing to provide long-term family planning - until she spent about two months worth of the Nigerian minimum wage to pay for an off-the-books (and therefore more expensive) “private service.” The procedure was sloppily performed, and she still bears the scar.
When she returned home, she told her aunt about her new contraceptive implant. The aunt slapped Ms. Adegbeye and made her brother-in-law go pay the doctor to take it out. Fortunately, he just pocketed the money without removing the implant, and Ms. Adegbeye eventually realised she preferred to date women.
She now has a 6-year-old daughter. Ms. Adebgeye hopes that when her daughter turns 25, like the ICPD, the world will be a better place for young girls and adolescents.
“You have 19 years – get to it!”
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