And We Spoke About Sex. . . Openly!!!

The Resource Persons, Prof Akosa and Rev Lutterodt

In a society where issues concerning reproductive health, sex and sexuality are hushed up, it is increasingly becoming worrisome that negative issues concerning these keep growing. In the light of this, and to help in demystifying the silence, a reproductive health seminar was held in Accra on Friday, February 15^th 2013.

The seminar, the brainchild of Kaylers Communications and dubbed “The SexTalk Forum” received an impressive turn out at the Kama Conference Center where it was held. The Resource persons for the night were Professor Agyemang Badu-Akosa, a onetime Director General of the Ghana Health Services and a Pathologist, Rev. George Lutterodt, a Councilor and Sex Therapist and Dr. Jehu-Appiah, the Country Director for Ipas Ghana. 

Henry Bruce and Dr. Jehu-Appiah

The forum opened with a presentation by Professor Badu-Akosa who spoke on safe sex practices and contraceptive usage. He got the audience excited with his style of delivery and debt of knowledge. Having had to perform autopsies on many young girls and realizing that the cause of death were mainly due to unsafe abortion, he is very passionate about safe sex practices and the educating of people about how to enjoy sex while taking their preventive measures seriously. In a jovial yet precise way, he gave various examples of people been faced with unwanted pregnancies and sometimes contracting diseases. He added that sex is a natural thing and people will definitely indulge in it. He encouraged parents and teachers to talk more openly about sex to the young ones while informing them about contraceptives. He dismissed the situation where parents especially keep quiet on sex and admonish their children not to engage in it. He said such a situation will make the children curious and would rather make them indulge in sexual activities in an earlier age, out of curiosity. 

Cross-section of audience

Rev. Lutterodt spoke on building your self esteem and learning to communicate sexually with your partner. Self esteem, he said is an inbuilt thing. No one can build the esteem of another person and a deliberate attempt to work on one’s self esteem has to be done on one’s own. He spoke about the attractiveness of confident people. There are situations where sometimes, even couples do not know how to ask for sex from each other. He spoke about communication being key to a happy sex life between couples and one of the ways through which people can easily state what they want, sexually, is when they know their bodies well enough and are able to tell their partners about how they want to be touched for instance. He admonished couples to be lovely and caring in their conversations so as to maintain sanity in their homes. 

The Country Director of Ipas Ghana, Dr Jehu-Appiah joined the panel for the open forum segment. The segment was for the audience to speak and either ask questions or make contributions. The Resource persons answered some of the questions and also made some contributions. The openness of this segment had some of the audience blatantly talking about sex and sexuality and contraceptives including their possible reactions to unwanted pregnancies. 

The entire evening was fun-filled. All the speakers spoke in plain and raw language which obviously excited the audience as they laughed and clapped throughout the forum. This rawness of language was also witnessed on the part of the audience during the open forum. The program was moderated by Sakyiwaa Mensah. There was also a poetry performance by Vincent Krah, aka Man of Men.

The maiden SexTalk Forum was sponsored by Ipas Ghana with support from Kenzo’s Place and Fiesta Condoms. It will be a quarterly forum and the next edition will be in May 2013.