The church is located in Kireka, in an area of Uganda called Buganda. The people surrounded the church live in either single room or double room “apartments”, the double rooms have a sitting room and then a bedroom and parents and children will sleep in the same room, with some having 7 children in one room.
From a young age children can hear their parents next door when they are sleeping together, so are exposed to sex from a very young age. Their sex education is limited to the functions of the reproductive system, which doesn’t happen until P7, when they are between 14-15 years old. No other education on sex is given. That task falls the the aunty, to tell young girls about sex. Sadly sex is a taboo topic, and they avoid discussing it until they have too. Most of the time this conversation happens when they are about to get married and need to know how to treat their husbands, and be good wives, at the age of 20+.
Young women as young as 11 start to copy their parents example, and are sexually active. They have no understanding of what sex is, except that which they have over heard, through the thin walls of their apartment. Many drop out of education due to unplanned pregnancy, with little to no support from their partners who are very young themselves. HIV/AIDS is still a big issues. When we walked around the area of the church we saw many used condoms, littering the streets. Sadly very few are used when people are having sex, so in a way, you wish you saw more.
