The following is a personal
testimony about the challenges facing young adults in Haiti to remain
committed to abstinence until marriage and in sharing their commitment
with others. It was translated from French by Meredith Long.
My name is Marckenzy Detérière. I am a young man in the Methodist church
of Port-au-Prince, and I work for World Relief as an officer in the
Anti-AIDS Brigade. It’s always a pleasure for me to talk everywhere I go
about my choice to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. It’s not
easy to resist sexual pressure when you are young, especially in a world
that gives you easy pretexts to push yourself into the pleasures of the
flesh. In Haiti, sexual relations have become almost a normal thing
among young people; nobody is surprised to hear that this or that young
person is very active sexually. It’s a common occurrence to encounter a
young student who doesn’t attend school any more because of a premature
pregnancy – even when this person is a member of the church.
This is the environment where I must say “Be Strong” to those who want
to listen and believe that I practice sexual abstinence until marriage.
“How do you do it?” friends often ask me. “Don’t you have sexual urges?
You are sick or you are foolish.” Even the adults of my church aren’t
afraid to say to me with a certain ease, “You’ll never be able to stick
it out, believe me.”
I think that, on the contrary, you would have to think these statements
of strength to overcome popular beliefs and to hold firmly until
marriage. Young people that we talk to ridicule us and others think that
we speak emptily. They believe that nobody in Haiti will listen to
messages about abstinence. This is false, because at the end of all our
discussions or conversations, the young people – even those who are very
sexually active – finish by admitting that what we say makes sense.