Quiz Time. Here are the brand names, but what's the product?
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 13/Jul/2010 16:34, 34 days ago
Here are the brand names. But what’s the product?AdamFrenzyLifestylesImpulseI’m becoming increasingly nocturnal. This is partly because the call to prayer it is very loud between 3 and 5, and partly because my roof leaks and it’s rained so much a ceiling panel has come loose - so now bats can get in. And while bats are very cute on nature programmes, they’re a bit scary in your living room.Anyway, this blog is nothing to do with bats or irregular sleeping patterns. I just thought I’d share.This one’s about condoms actually. And yes the list above is a list of condom brands. It’s enough to make a person cringe.The only brand of condom you see in Cameroon is called“Prudence”. This is a good, honest name for a condom if you ask me. Back in the west, we have marketing people who earn way too much money making up names to flatter (“Trojan”? Please…) or to entice (“Pleasure Plus”? I ask you…). Sometimes I think we’ve all gone marketing mad. Deciding which condom to use is not a “lifestyle choice”. Your selected brand does not “say anything about you as a person”. (Is there any product in the UK not subject to this tosh? Do people go to the chemist for haemorrhoid cream and have to choose the one that best reflects their personality?)I much prefer the Cameroonian approach, and I would like to see the UK take a leaf out of Cameroon’s book, get rid of these pretentious brand names and introduce a new condom called quite simply “Sensible”.Anyway, I work for an association called RESAEC and we have free Prudences available at our office for anyone who is too skint or embarrassed to buy them from the shop. The problem is, people are also embarrassed to get them from anyone but my boss Boubakari (though sometimes they’ll approach me, because everyone knows us westerners love condoms, so I won’t judge or gossip.) Therefore, they tend to come in the evening after the other staff have left. Boubakari stays every night until around eight to accommodate these visits. I’ve taken to staying on in the evenings too, because it means I don’t have to turn up for work until 10am, and because if I’m not there Boubakari has to mess about locking and unlocking the doors when he goes out for evening prayers. Last week he was away however, so I was on my own for Prudence duty. Sometimes people would come in, askfor the boss, and when they found out he was away they’d look a bit sheepish and slink off.It’s sad there’s so much shame surrounding condoms, but encouraging to see how many takers there are when people feel at ease asking for them.We also give out femidoms, which are a bit of a new idea and tend to be popular with women whose husbands/boyfriends refuse to use protection. I did feel quite ambivalent about this initially. In my opinion a man so irresponsible deserves to be alone– and alone with a broken nose, ideally. Using a femidom feels too much like capitulation.But then that’s easy for me to say isn’t it? I can choose to be with or not be with a man. Nobody can force me. I’m not constrained in the same way as women here by money or society.The more I think about it the more the introduction of the femidom seems like a huge step in the right direction. Apart from anything else it gives women a choice. And choice is something women in Cameroon so very rarely have.