Sex In the Dark

(Full disclosure – this post is not as racy as the title implies.  Sorry.)

4-9-11

For the last two days, I’ve been in Northern Chalatenango, helping to host a workshop called “Horizontes de Prevención” – a workshop aimed at educating youth about HIV/AIDS and general sexual health.  We stayed in a free, government run campsite named El Refugio.  Anyone can use it who wants to, but the cabins are completely basic – you have to bring your own food, sheets, towels, soap, and toilet paper.  My cabin was also infested with a herd of rats running around in between the ceiling and the roof tiles, but that’s pretty much par for the course in El Salvador.  Other than the rats, I couldn’t help thinking how much nicer the cabin was than my house, since it had indoor plumbing with running (cold) water.  There was even a set of plastic chairs and a table in the little dining space.  Fancy.

All the volunteers participating brought several youth from their sites; there were about twenty in total.  The workshop was filled with lectures and activities about HIV/AIDS, other STDs, and safe sex.  My personal favorite activity was Paso a Paso (Step by Step), where we went through the process of putting on a condom one step at a time.  (Did anybody else know that there are EIGHT steps?  And yes, penetración sexual is one of them.  We didn’t practice that part though.)

We did, however, practice putting condoms on wooden dildos, generously provided to us by PEPFAR funds (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).  The whole weekend was an exercise in trying to make the fundamentally uncomfortable seem like it’s not uncomfortable at all.  All you have to do is act really nonchalant, make a few inappropriate jokes, and suddenly the teens that had too much pena (embarrassment) to stand up in front of the group and introduce themselves at the beginning of the weekend are proudly holding up wooden dildos and condoms and posing for the camera.  Go figure.

The last night of the workshop, we had an activity called “Sexo en el Oscuro” (Sex in the Dark).  Over the course of two days, we had a cardboard box where the teenagers could put any question they had at all about HIV/AIDS, sex, and reproductive health that they were too penoso to ask in front of everyone.  Then, the female volunteers took the girls in one cabin and the male volunteers took the boys in another, we turned down the lights, and answered all of their questions as candidly as possible.  Bethany, one of the other volunteers, started by answering several questions about HIV and birth control methods, then she told me to pull a question and answer it.

My first question – What is masturbation?

I knew it was put in by a girl, because honestly, what 16-year-old boy is in the dark about masturbation?  I was so prepared to talk about sex.  I’d already answered several questions on the topic throughout the workshop, when girls approached me individually.  But suddenly I had to define (in Spanish) what masturbation is?  Ha.  Most grown women in the States (that great, semi-sexually liberated country to the north) don’t even feel comfortable talking about this candidly.  I can understand why it was in the box.  Several times over.

After a few false starts, I manage to give the basics.  The girls were giggly at first, and eventually all rapt attention.  (Especially when we started explaining the clitoris.  But I won’t go into that here.)  Good thing it was dark, because I was blushing up a storm at first, even though I was supposed to be the open, I-have-no-embarrassment-button sex expert.  And no, I have no idea what I did to deserve THAT particular title.  Made me feel like that really old lady who has a show on late late night TV who answers all those call-in questions about sex.  A heady distinction to be sure, but one that loses a bit of its cache when you start blushing like a school girl at the word “masturbation”.

Whatever, we got through it; with the girls (hopefully) more informed about sex and sexual health topics than they were to begin with.  The next day, we went to a nearby school, and the youth who attended the workshop replicated several of the lectures and activities that we did for the students there.  I was really proud of the teens I brought; they did a really great job.  They did pretty much everything with almost no help from me, except for a few brief points of clarification.

So, thanks to this program, as well as the women’s health series I’m starting, I’m officially the local sex guru.  They DID tell me I’d be doing things in Peace Corps that I never expected, but I don’t remember seeing this in the brochure.