Bujumbura : sexual debauchery pushes many minors to resort to different contraceptive methods

Many minors in the commercial capital Bujumbura regularly resort to contraceptive methods, including the “morning after pill”. 15 pharmacies in the city confirmed this phenomenon to our reporter. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

Our reporter was recently looking for a medicine in a pharmacy.

“In front of me in the queue was a teenager aged barely 13 years who, when her turn came, asked the pharmacist, without batting an eyelid, for the 72-hour pill commonly called the “morning after pill”. She was served and left.

In front of the pharmacist, I asked if such a request by a minor was normal.

She admitted that minors are her best customers for this type of product and that the girl in question bought it on average twice a week.

A woman who was following our conversation said that in Bujumbura, many girls under 15 regularly use contraceptive methods, especially the morning after pill, without worrying about its many side effects, and this without their parents knowing.

Intrigued, I checked with more than 15 pharmacies in the Bujumbura municipality, all of which confirmed that this is a real phenomenon : minors very often ask them contraceptives, especially this famous pill.

“This gap of minors sufficiently measures the depravity of morals in Burundi. There is a gap between traditional practices of our mothers and grandmothers who had to remain locked up in the family enclosure (“Abanyakigo”) under threat of death penalty for any unmarried girl who became pregnant (gutabwa mu gisumanyenzi!) and the reality of the moment”, recalls a sociologist.

And parents straddling two cultures, the traditional, even if too rigorous, but which remains their reference, and the modern which feeds social media, current favorite pastime of the youth, do not know where to turn.

“Without sufficient maturity and without a spirit of discernment, some young people turn their backs on their parents and go to the school of social media from which they draw debauchery and depravity of morals”, adds the sociologist.

And Burundian mothers who themselves have never discussed sexuality issues with their own parents find it difficult to talk about it with their children. They only see the damage.