Prime
Pornography almost ruined my life
Joseph Haleliimana holds a placard of the ‘Uganda, a porn free zone’ campaign recently. The 20-year-old is a former drugs and sex addict. Photo by Joseph kato
At 20 years, Joseph Haleliimana, does not remember the number of girls he has slept with. Haleliimana’s addiction started when he watched an adult movie in 2007. Then, a Primary Five pupil, he had returned home in the afternoon hours after his sister had gone for work.
Feeling bored one afternoon, he decided to watch a film. “I checked my sister’s bag where she used to keep her movies. I picked one title The Asia. To my shock, I saw people having sex,” Haleliimana recollects.
He says the first time, he just laughed it off and thought it was a joke. He removed the movie from the DVD player and took it back to his sister’s bag.
Days later, he developed a desire to watch the movie again. It eventually became his favourite film whenever his sister was not home.
“I watched the movie more than 10 times in a month. I started feeling that I was a grown up. I had my first girlfriend and my first sexual encounter two months later,” he reveals.
Venturing into dangerous waters
By the time he completed Primary Seven, his sexual desire had advanced. When he joined St Marys, Kitende, he had a discussion on sex with three male friends. To his surprise, they were going through similar experiences.
The quartet started dating girls, reading and watching sexually-explicit material. In addition, the group started using drugs such as Viagra, marijuana and alcohol purposely for sex stimulation.
At the time, he rented a room without his sister’s knowledge. This gave him liberty to date more girls and going to school became optional.
“I could hardly settle in class. My performance gradually declined. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I could not do without it,” Haleliimana says.
A few days to register with Uneb for Senior Four in 2013, Haleliimana was arrested alongside other drug abusers. By the time he was released from police cells, his fellow students had completed filling the forms.
This meant he had to look for another school that was yet to register. It was a struggle for him since most schools in and around Kampala had finished filling the Uneb forms.
His sister secured him a place at Mwelerwe Secondary School in Nakaseke District. However, his woes followed him. He was again arrested for becoming a public nuisance in Semuto Town. He sat for his Uneb while in police custody.
“I would be escorted by the police to sit for papers. They would return me to the cells in the evening,” he stresses.
Turning point
Haleliimana, who joined secondary with a good first grade, had scored a distant third grade when Senior Four results were returned. This situation made him rethink how he was handling his life. That was when he shared his situation with Godfrey Kutesa of Kutesa Foundation, a non-profit organisation that rehabilitates boys addicted to pornography and drugs.
Haleliimana says Kutesa offered him counselling on sex, pornography and drug addictions. However, it was not easy for him to reform, as he would often get tempted and go back to his old ways.
“Sometimes the need to have sex would surpass rehabilitation strategy. I would be forced to look for a girl to sleep with by hook or crook. I would settle only after I had had sex,” he confesses.
Kutesa admits that it was not easy to reform Haleliimana since he used to hide and smoke, watch pornography or hunt girls. His past behaviour would be sparked off whenever he would associate with bad peers.
“I gave him liberty to do whatever he wanted but I would encourage him to minimise because rehabilitation is a gradual process. It took about six months for him to cope with new life. He slowly learnt how to do without porn and I am happy he is now one of the lead campaigners against pornography,” Kutesa says.
Currently, Haleliimana, who will be joining Makerere University on private admission, and Kutesa in collaboration with a group of 200 women under the umbrella of Mothers Raising Sons (MRS), have embarked on the campaign dubbed make Uganda a porn-free zone.
The campaign that is being conducted in the streets and suburbs of Kampala is aimed at encouraging parents not to keep a deaf ear on pornographic content which their children are exposed to.
Kutesa says it is time parents stopped pretending that their children are innocent, but take a step forward at fighting pornography in homes. He says his campaign against pornography was enthused when he visited a school in Kampala and students shared the pornographic-related material they had in their bags, and phones.
The law
The anti-pornography law creates a national anti-pornography committee responsible for its implementation by ensuring early detection, collection and destroying of pornographic materials.
The committee, whose representatives were to be drawn from various sectors including the media and entertainment industries, was to offer rehabilitation services to victims of pornography.
