Today, 12 august 2011, i and martin met more than 400 people from many different cultural and religious backgrounds. We came, learn and share with teenagers, students, mothers, activists, medical workers, sex workers and nuns. We do the workshops in schools, university, nunneries, NGO offices and villages. We talk a lot over sexuality and reproductive health and rights. Everytime always challenging, lot of fun and laugh. People are always exciting and comes up with their question about their bodies.
I wonder how our body and mind can keep going with these without feeling tired and bored. Maybe because we doing it with passion, and the more we witnessing people's excitement the more we passionated about it.
Talking about abortion is not always easy, to bring this conversation we have to use many different strategies. Sometimes we have to start from unwanted pregnancies, sexual pleasure, contraception or sometimes we have to talk about depression after abortion at first before talkin the issue itself.
I understand that sexuality and reproductive health itself not a common subject to discuss in public. So, talkin about abortion is like jumping the issue. Juggling strategy, that’s how i call the methode on how to bring the issue into a public discussion.
From many different subjects, we ussually put the abortion subject in the middle or in the end. It’s important to create a comfort space at first so people are safe to be open freely, then start with subject that relate to the context of the abortion itself. For example, in some area abortion is not an option to end unwanted pregnancies, thats why the number of teens marriage are high.
Our first workshop in Kupang is with students in Nusa Cendana University. It takes 10 minutes for me to take a deep breath and makes my self relax before I start the workshop. the participants are young men, when they came to the room and taking a seat, I can feel the athmosphere of masculine energy fulfill the room. Their body language are so macho. It’s kinda challenging to take back the energy and make them more relax on the workshop. So, I came to them one by one, introduce myself with smile and Martin give candy. With smile and candy, they become more relax. Even more relax with subject about sexual pleasure. We are all agreed that sex is natural and fun but we also underlined about the consequency relate to their future dream. We also discuss about relationship and asking them about what they expect from and for someone they loved. All of them agreed that unwanted pregnancy is not what they expected, especially to take unsafe abortion as an option to end the pregnancy. Starts from this point of view, then everyone become more receptive to the discussion on safe abortion.
We do the workshop with them in 2 days, in the end I surprised to see how open they are into the subject. No women comes to the workshop but that’s okay as long we can informed well all the men, they will bring the awareness to their partner and friends.
2nd workshop in Kupang is with mothers, some of them brings their babies to te workshop. for this group, we start the subject with pregnancy, birth option and breast feeding, which ofcourse the most topic they need. From here we continue with contraception. And the question is : what happen if contraception failed? Is there anyone taking abortion as an option? Most of them did not take this option, but as we all know that women care to each others, at least we will find out that some of their friends take this option and usually it is not unsafe. We may also heard about abortion cases surrounding them. From here then we bring the issue into safe abortion.
so, create a comfort zone and the context at first is the key to bring the issue into a public discussion.
To be continue
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