You can ask from your friends, your peers, or older friends. For instance, I learned about 

menstruation from many elder friends. I also learned about abortions from friends. 

[Naomi] 

Two girls reported that it was their boyfriends and not a mother or female caretaker who 

told them about menstruation.  A girl's boyfriend told her: 

If you have not started menstruating and you are sexually active you won't get pregnant, 

but once you start menstruating you could get pregnant. [Ariel] 

4.2 

Learning about Sex and Related Topics from Teachers 

About a third of the participants said that they learned something about sex and related 

topics in school as well. The others either did not recall whether they had been taught about sex, 

said they had been taught nothing about sex, or had dropped out of school before they were old 

enough to have that class.  

Both the girls and the teachers interviewed for the study described a variety of 

reproductive health topics that were discussed in school, including physical and emotional 

development process, reproductive organs, menstruation, sex, fertility, contraception, and 

teenage pregnancy; however, not all the topics were taught at all schools.  The teachers reported 

that representatives from various organizations came to lecture periodically on reproductive 

health in the schools. Classes on reproductive health were said to be taught generally at JSS and 

SSS levels.  However, some teachers reported that sexual development was taught at the primary 

level as well. Life skills teachers reported that the curriculum included topics related to the 

physical and emotional development of the children.  One of them said, 

At the JSS level we teach them the physical development that they see when they enter 

into adolescent age, where the girl begins to develop breasts, have her menstruation, the 

formation of the hips and other things both boys and girls having pubic hairs, at the arm 

pit and around the sexual parts. We also encourage them to keep themselves neat, at this 

stage they are developing. So they have to know personal hygiene, how to keep 

themselves very neat to prevent other infections and other diseases. [Life skills teacher 

JSS] 

For example, Joy, who had finished JSS 3, discussed what the life skills teachers said 

they always taught about sex in school: 

We were taught in school that from age 12 onwards [that] the female body starts to 

develop into that of a teenager; your breasts would develop and you will get pubic hair. 

When it gets to your first menstruation you may either get stomach cramps or feel cold. 

You have to ask an elderly person to show you what to do. . . we were taught that if you 

had sex you would get pregnant, but we were not taught anything about abortion. But I 

know about it. [Joy] 

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