You may need to re-exam your friends. Good friends don’t call you names or make fun of you when you don’t do what they do or when you are not like them. Good friends should always respect you for what you are. Good friends should never force you into having sex. Having sex is a decision you will have to make after weighing out all the possible consequences of sexual intercourse.

Being a virgin is normal and very healthy and you should be proud of it. It is the best way to avoid early unwanted pregnancy with its associated responsibilities and consequences which include dropping out of school.

At this point in your life, your education should be your priority and you should desist anything like sex which may divert you from concentrating on your studies or cause you to drop out of school. Good education will guarantee a good future. Your future lies in your hands so don’t do anything for the sake of pleasing your friends.

Remaining a virgin is also one of the ways of avoiding Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) which include Syphilis, Gonorrhoea and even HIV/AIDS.  STIs when not treated early or properly may lead to complications like barrenness or even death like in the case of HIV/AIDS.

It is not true that when you have no sex, a lot of water will accumulate in your back because biologically your reproductive system is not connected to your back.

In marriage, people look for partners whom they respect and are responsible and able to raise and look after the family and not people who have a lot of practice in sex. Your education and virginity are likely to add you additional points.

The fact that your friends say they are having sex, does not mean that they really are or that you should do it too. A lot of friends brag about their sexual adventures to gain false prestige or acceptance from their friends.
It is very normal not to have a girl friend. Do not be pressured by your friends to have a girl friend or try to get one simply to please your friends. We are all different and have different needs at different times. You need to stand up to them and explain your position.

Before engaging in sexual intercourse, think about the responsibilities and the consequences which go with it like pregnancy, STDs, HIV/AIDS especially with unprotected sex. Even if you used condoms as a protection against pregnancy and STDs, they are also negative emotional consequences.

Yes, it is possible for a girl to get pregnant if she has unprotected sexual intercourse during per period (i.e. when she is still breeding). It depends on the length of her cycle, how many days her period lasts and when she has sexual intercourse because the sperm can survive up to 3-4 days in a woman’s body.

For a girl with a short menstrual cycle like that of 21 days, ovulation (release of the egg) may occur when she is still in her period especially if she stays long like 7 days in her periods. Therefore it is possible for the girl to get pregnant so long as there are sperm when ovulation occurs even if she is still in her periods.

A wet dream (or nocturnal emission) is when a boy’s penis becomes erect and he ejaculates while sleeping. Wet dreams are part of the growth changes that happen in boys during puberty.

As a child nears puberty, a gland in the brain, called the pituitary gland, increases the secretion of a hormone called follicle-simulating hormone (FSH). In boys, FSH causes sperms to develop.
Wet dreams are caused by sexual excitements from dreams or by physical stimulation like rubbing against the blankets or beds.

Wet dreams are healthy and natural. When you get wet dreams, there is no need to worry, get embarrassed or feel guilty because they are part of normal sexual development. Not all boys however get wet dreams. If you have never got a wet dream, that’s normal too, it does not mean anything is wrong with you.

Thank you for the concern about your friends. You must be a true friend to worry and want to help. Naturally, we can never predict the exact “problems” that our friends will get but we could consider and explore certain general challenges and ways in which you could help in that kind of situation.

Your friends could contract sexually transmitted infections like Gonorrhea, syphilis, HIV/AIDS, and more. They could also end up with a pregnancy, in case they engage in unprotected sexual intercourse or miss use a condom.

Your friends are also at a risk of building the foundation of their relationship on sex performance, which would lead to a quick break up should one of them not match up to the other’s satisfaction.

Your friend could even be accused by the girls’ parents for defilement because the girls is less than 18 years. According to the Uganda law, have sex with a girl of less than 18 years is illegal wthether consensual or not. Defilement carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

With a few of those sample challenges, you as a friend could share with them more knowledge on the risks of engaging in sex, and help them preoccupy themselves with activities that would divert their attention from the desire to engage in sex.

Sex feelings are a normal part of growing and can be controlled using Abstinence skills. These skills are very rarely mentioned when people talk of Abstinence yet they are very important. Some of the abstainance skills include:

Self awareness: Your ability to identify the things that trigger your sexual feelings.
Imagination: Your ability to create in your mind , options to limit your feeling beyond your present reality.
Conscience: A deep inner awareness of the separating the right options from a wrong ones.
Independent will: Ability to decide on a response to what exactly triggered your sexual feeling, free from all other influence

The following may help you to control your sexual feeling:
First you should appreciate that having sexual feelings is a normal. In fact you would be abnormal if you did not have them. However those feelings do not mean anything and you don’t have to do anything about them. Nothing will happen when sexual feeling are ignored. In fact after some time the feelings may change or even vanish.

Secondly you should avoid situations and behavior that can cause you to get temptations of having sexual intercourse.

Then be very active in many activities. When you are young you are so energetic and you need to use  that energy to engage in productive activities or to develop a particular skill e.g sports. In this way your mind will not think about the sexual feelings. I think there are many more ways some even individual specific we have to continue thinking about them.

Bad touches constitute a category of sexual abuse that is suffered silently by most women for various reasons. Things like touching your breasts, stroking your bums, caressing your thighs in class or taxis, are incidences that are not right and safe for you as young people.
Because of the fact that they are common and yet less punished, it becomes every young girl’s responsibility to guard her self from such humiliating touches.

Through dressing better, in less revealing clothes, one could limit the occurrence of bad touches as there will not be much exposure to whoever wants to touch; adopting better sitting postures say in classes would block any chances of a boy from caressing ones ajar thighs; choosing hangout spots should be done carefully as some places are common with boys and men that would touch every descent and not woman or girl.

Your ways of interaction with the male sex should be straight forward and should not send mixed signals and lastly girls and women need to check their time of movement in certain areas, just so to keep themselves safe.

Thank you for inquiring. Both reasons for sex from this boy are wrong. The fact that you are in puberty, means you grew from conception [time of birth], to infancy, childhood and now puberty, all without having sex to help you grow.

Breast size just like growth is also not determined by having sexual intercourse.  Breasts normally enlarge at the time of puberty in response to the hormone oestrogen, produced by the ovaries. It is therefore not true that sex would make you grow or get bigger breasts. You have a hormone [a substance that regulates body processes] oestrogen, that is responsible for that.

Do not be fooled by this boy nor compare your breasts to those of other girls because we all grow at diffrent rates.

Sorry about your challenge young sister. It must be a horrible experience for you, not having a pad to use. I take it you meant the already made sanitary products in the market. Well, my sister, your challenge is apparently still experienced by many women and girls today. Your worry is created by the misconception that we must always use these manufactured sanitary towels on the market but that is not true because you can make one yourself, especially if you cannot afford the ones in the market today.

One of the timeless methods used is that of making one yourself by using a cotton piece of cloth [so it can absorb and hold your flow]. It could be from an old dress, bed sheet or any other cotton cloth you could specifically buy for making your pads.

Fold the piece of cloth to a small rectangular shape to a layer thick enough to hold your flow and a length that does not peep out of your panty [which by the way should be fitting enough to hold your pad and not make it slide off your body] . Fold more pieces of the same sort for storage in your bag for you to keep changing for hygiene and to avoid leakages, when the one you are wearing gets soaked. At least change every three to four hours if your flow is not heavy.

If you have many clothes, you could throw this used one away but if you do not have more, thoroughly wash the used one CLEAN, dry it and iron it for another use. In case you do not have an iron box, ensure that the cloth dries under direct sun and fresh air or wind.

This method is one that never grows old and requires a lot of good hygiene and confidence from you.

Forced marriage is against your right as a child and I commend you for your refusal yet, and do not give up on your self. Your situation is indeed a worrying one but could have a way out of it, depending on the situations surrounding your life.

Lets explore some of these situations;-

Assuming you were in a day School, not far from where your parents stay, you could explain your challenge to one of your teachers or head teacher and request them to talk to your parents about the benefits of them leaving you in school.

In another situation, that you have relatives with girl children in school, try to talk to them and request their assistance to talk to your parents, so they could change your parent’s attitudes.

Let’s not also forget the possible reasons for them to force you into marriage. May be your parents feel like you are not studying hard enough, that probably you’re too jumpy with boys or are you too indisciplined.  Some parents still think that marriage is the best place to correct indiscipline, or the only success for academically challenged girls. Should this be true, you as a person need to do better in your behavior, character, academics and personal discipline and way of communicating to your parents so that they can treasure you more as an asset or investment for their better lives as well in future rather then force you into marriage.

In a situation that your parents are just being abusive and do not see value in you going to school, you could visit the Child and Family Protection Desk at the nearest police post in your home area, so they could better help you all as a family. This Desk has friendly officers [not necessarily Police officers] that have special skills in helping families with challenges relating to abuse. Both forced marriage and chasing you from home can be classified as child abuse and neglect.

So my dear troubled youth, try to assess the circumstances surrounding your challenge and seek guidance from a social worker, counselor, religious leaders, other relatives, teachers and head teacher, organizations or police for help.