One of my friends yesterday said her son advised her to announce to him first via mobile sms before visiting him at a university where he is studying for a degree in software engineering over 300 kilometres away from Harare.
ROPAFADZO MAPIMHIDZE
But why did he not want his mother to crash-land on him when in fact she always did when he was still at a boarding school for years?
“I am worried about the high turnover of girlfriends that he has had over the past two years and I think I need to just take a trip there and see for myself what this young man is up to,” said the worried parent.
This confirmed rumours that have been doing rounds about students that are sharing accommodation with the opposite sex in order to share costs.
Although such incidents were not so common in the past, the economic meltdown has resulted in many students finding themselves in such situations as parents fail to meet their children’s needs.
Although this young man is well catered for by his parents, it would seem as though he has become so promiscuous and changes women as and when he wishes to.
And he does not want his mother to visit him at varsity because she will obviously discover a lot of extra-curricular activities this young man is engaged in.
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What is, however, most saddening is that the girls that these young men date, are more often than not, also dating elderly men or sugar daddies who prey on disadvantaged girls at institutions of higher learning. They agree with their young boyfriends to lie to them that they are brothers or somehow related to each other.
In other words, male students are using fellow students to bait elderly men and in turn benefit from the spoils. Yes, this is actually happening at universities sprawled around the country although two or three of them stand out.
Gone are the days when university was free. Today students have to pay for their accommodation whether or not they are on campus and also pay for their meals.
Those from poor families end up engaging in sexual activities with students from well-to-do families or sugar daddies from the locality that provide them with the few goodies to keep them happy, but the price that these students pay is heavy.
On so many occasions that I have attended graduation ceremonies, the number of students receiving their degrees posthumously has also continued to rise.
This is because most of these cases often result in either unwanted pregnancies, or students contracting HIV which eventually leads to full-blown Aids.
Although awareness on the disease is now part of the curricula at most local universities, stigma is still a major hiccup to treatment. More has to be done to integrate HIV and Aids studies in all faculties of learning if Zimbabwe is really serious about bringing this menace to zero incidence.
Students would rather pretend they are suffering from some other illness and not HIV instead of going public and seeking medical attention which is basically free at most public hospitals.
It is a culture that needs to be quickly eradicated at these institutions because it is a fact that promiscuous activities are very high at these institutions with some universities labelled as high risk.
The high-risk universities are the ones that do not offer accommodation on campus and hence female students fall prey to unscrupulous landlords who charge high rentals
There have been stories of at least six students sharing a room at some township in the Midlands which is near a local university. This is apparently rampant in Masvingo and Bulawayo.
Those wanting more privacy land in the hands of a sugar daddy that pays for the whole room for the duration of a student’s study.
This is a practice this sugar daddy will repeat on other students when the present ones graduate and the cycle is repeated over and over again.
Across the border in South Africa, local students are also known to engage in full-time prostitution in order to make ends meet.
This is particularly so for students on scholarship who sometimes can go for a term without fees paid and end up in the arms of men that have money to give them pleasure.
Last year, we buried one student who had now been employed as a civil servant with a local ministry, hardly a year after she had graduated.
The young woman was a strong Christian, but her past somehow caught up with her as she suffered some ailment which resulted in an HIV test.
The results came out as positive with a CD4 count as low as 41. On being questioned about how she contracted the disease, the young woman alleged that this could have happened in South Africa when fees had not been paid for by the President’s Fund resulting in her seeking money using her body.
Her death shocked so many neighbours because she was a fairly decent young woman with prospects of climbing ladders of success because she was very intelligent.
But that was never to happen because she did not last three months after taking medication perhaps because she was in denial. She died and was buried at her home village in Gutu.
There are apparently lots of stories similar to this one about local girls and I think universities have to take it upon themselves to protect students from such activities through sustained sex education campaigns.
It would seem as though students are mainly worried about falling pregnant and not contracting HIV, a situation that is worrying. There is also ignorance about the disease especially among students who come from humble schools in the rural areas who suddenly find themselves in an environment that is too free with no restrictions at all.
Zimbabwe has one of the best HIV and Aids programmes in Africa, but a lot still has to be done at these institutions where sex is like part of the subjects being studied.
“We all know who is sleeping with whom, and who has a sugar daddy. It’s unfortunate that girls are mostly victims but we too become victims when we decide to marry these women that would have already contracted HIV.
“There seems to be competition about who gets more goodies and hence this exposes girls to such activities. I personally believe that is why some men will not marry students they studied with because they know their sexual history,” said one student from Midlands State University in Gweru.
The new country director for United States Centre for Disease Control Beth Tippett Barr recently said she aimed at acquiring a 90-90-90 target set by UNaids to help end the Aids epidemic in Zimbabwe.
It’s a goal to see 90% of all people knowing their HIV status and 90% those infected having access to a sustained antiretroviral therapy and 90% receiving antiretroviral therapy to have suppression by 2020.
But how will this be achieved when our universities where future leaders are being moulded are actually the drivers of this epidemic?
This is tragic.
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