What sort of question is this?
I have even failed to get where to start! Can you imagine… we are now debating about whether virginity is important or not! Some people actually believe that it is not! Who knew that one day we would be this fallen? God save us.

As a religious person, I find virginity a spiritual aspect, as a responsible person, I take virginity as a taste of patience and character.

In primary school, I remember my science teacher saying, "Sex is indeed pleasurable, but its sole purpose is for reproduction,” and he went on to explain why. After his lengthy scientific explanation he advised us, "if then you think that pleasure comes before responsibility, then don’t cry if you become a teenage father or mother.”

In my church, the priest told us that sex before marriage is sin, an abomination before God. He said that the devil tempts on man and if man yields to lust, falls into the devil’s trap. The priest again asked young people, especially girls, to look after their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit instead of using them as sex toys.

Those days when I was a young boy, my father never said a thing about sex or virginity to me till one fateful day when he caught me and my childhood girlfriend playing a very silly game. He took me to his room and started lecturing me on my body parts.

"Son, what are eyes for?” "For seeing.” I answered. "What do you do when you put sand into your eyes?” he asked.

And I was like, "They start to hurt and I cry.” Then he said, "Son, be careful. I know you will soon grow to be a nice looking lad and your mind will be mature enough to make its own decisions. I ask you one thing, go into the living room and watch that video tape labeled ‘Ndiwulira.’

‘Ndiwulira’ is a classic Ugandan drama that depicts how HIV/AIDS can affect family members, both the infected and not. After watching it, my father came to me and said, "Now, sand may hurt only your eyes, but if you use your private parts badly, you will hurt the whole of your body and me too!”

Virginity is a virtue spoken well of by parents, teachers, religions and the Kinyarwanda culture. How on earth can all the four institutions be wrong on this subject? If virginity weren’t that important, they wouldn’t bother stressing it to the younger generation.

People may go on and claim that nobody should tell them what to do with their bodies, but deep inside their conscience, l am almost certain that they recognize the value of virginity.

The whole world agrees that the most precious things in life are those that cannot be replaced. Guess what, you cannot find your virginity once you’ve given it away!

People who are virgins have one significant advantage over those that are not. Virgins still have a choice to either stay virgins or break it at any point that they so wish. Those that are not virgins simply can’t make that decision anymore.

Ends