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Sierra Leone: Sex and STD Awareness through Video

Categories: Sub-Saharan Africa, Sierra Leone, Arts & Culture, Citizen Media, Development, Education, Health, Youth
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The Vickie Remoe Show

In Sierra Leone, Vickie Remoe hosts and produces a magazine style show that covers a variety of topics: from undiscovered musical geniuses, to a day in the life of different tradespeople, sports and in a recent installment, Sex and STD education among college students.

Even though, Vickie mentions,  it can take up to 5 hours to upload 5 minutes of video, the content of the Vickie Remoe Show [2] has been made available on Blip.tv. [3] so that we can take a look into Sierra Leone's youth culture.

In the four part installment we follow Vickie as she visits  Mt. Aureol to talk to students at the Fourah Bay College, one of the top schools in the region. Through her conversations and a couple of contest in this first video [4] we can glimpse at the variety of perceptions regarding sex. From savvy women and men who believe in safer sex and prevention to women who might want to protect themselves but are not doing it correctly. Worth noting is the comment from one of the interviewees who stated that while most students are interested in protecting themselves with condoms, if they don't have one on their person it is unlikely that they will stop to go look for one.

After finding out that many of the students are misinformed regarding contraceptive and protection methods, Vickie's next stop [5] is the Marie Stopes clinic which provides family planning services and information through the Blue Star Network. She's shown the different types of methods and chooses the implant, and it is put in after an examination.

In this next part, Vickie speaks with a young man whose risky behaviours caused him to get sick several times from sexually transmitted diseases. Interestingly enough, it seems that getting sick once didn't make the young man think he would be at risk again.

For the last video [6] in the series, Vickie visits a doctor and asks him about sexually transmitted diseases. In conclusion: anyone can get an STD if their sexual behavior is risky, and that condoms are the only method which protect both from STDs and unwanted pregnancies.