That Kenyans will lie, cheat or bribe to get their way is old news. We bribe to get our children into good schools to be taught proper ethics, lie to get ahead at work and in life and steal from everyone, including the sick. Unsurprisingly, this shows up in our homes and relationships if a recent report is anything to go by.
Men bed anyone they can and their wives sneak around lodgings with their own side pieces. If you want a faithful woman, your recourse is Kwale where only 0.5 per cent of those sampled reported having multiple sexual partners.
According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) 2022 report, women from Murang’a and Men from Narok counties lead in having multiple sexual partners.
In the report, 11 per cent of Murang’a women admitted to have more than one sexual partner, followed by women from Kericho at 6.5 per cent, Kiambu (5.8 per cent), Nairobi City (4.8 per cent), Narok at 4.7 per cent and Laikipia (4.7 per cent).
However, the 2014 KDHS report, Nairobi region led at 19 per cent and Nyanza region at 18 per cent as regions where men and women had multiple sexual partners.
However, women from Kericho county are leading the pack for having sexual intercourse in the last 12 months with a person who neither was their husband nor lived with them at 27.9 per cent. They are followed by women from Nandi at 25 per cent, Bungoma (23.6 per cent), Nairobi (22.7 per cent) and Elgeyo Marakwet at 22.1 per cent.
The KDHS report further shows that Narok men are bedroom masters and one woman cannot satisfy them.
Narok men who admitted to having multiple sexual partners stood at 42.5 per cent followed by Migori at 28.7 per cent. Elgeyo Marakwet was at 28.5 per cent. Other counties leading the pack are Murang’a (22.6 per cent), Mombasa (20.9) and Tharaka Nithi (20.1 per cent).
According to KDHS 2022 report, a higher proportion of men (15 per cent) across the country more than women (4 per cent) reported having two or more sexual partners in the last 12 months prior to the survey.
Of those with more than one partner in the last 12 months, 24 per cent of women and 45 per cent of men reported using a condom during their last sexual intercourse.
Only 37 per reported using a condom
At most 19 per cent of women reporting to have had sex with a person who neither was their husband nor lived with them, and just 37 per cent of these women reported using a condom during their last sexual intercourse with such a partner.
Thirty-five per cent of men reported having sex in last 12 months with a person who neither was their wife nor lived with them and 68 per cent of these men reported using a condom during their last sexual intercourse with such a partner.
At the same time, the report notes that Kenyan men are still ‘jogoo’ when it comes to bedroom matters and one woman cannot satisfy their sexual needs.
The average numbers of sexual partners are 2.3 among women and 7.4 among men.
On the use of contraceptives, two out of every ten (20 per cent of) sexually active unmarried women in Kenya prefer the use of male condoms during sexual intercourse.
Injectables follow at 16 per cent and implants at 11 per cent. The survey was done among women aged between 15 to 49 years old.
Seven out of every ten unmarried women in the same age bracket use at least one form of contraception with 57 per cent of the women saying they used modern contraceptive methods in the last 12 months.
As per the report, modern methods include male and female sterilisation, injectables, intrauterine devices (IUDs), contraceptive pills, implants, female and male condoms, emergency contraception, the standard days method, and the lactational amenorrhea method.
The report further said that traditional methods of contraception were more popular among unmarried women (11 per cent) compared to their married counterparts (6 per cent).
Unlike their unmarried counterparts, who prefer condom as a method of contraception, married women prefer injectables (20 per cent), implants (19 per cent) and contraceptive pills (8 per cent).
The percentage of married women using a modern contraceptive method is lowest in Mandera (2 per cent), followed by Wajir (3 per cent), Marsabit (6 per cent), and Garissa (11 per cent), with Embu (82 per cent) recording the highest.
The report also indicated that both urban and rural Kenyan women use contraceptives at almost equal levels, with urban women at 63.1 per cent and rural women at 62.2 per cent. The survey also showed that the more educated and richer a Kenyan woman is, the likelier she’d be on contraception.
“If all women who said they want to space or limit their children were to use family planning methods, the contraceptive prevalence rate would increase from 62 per cent to 76 per cent among currently married women and from 70 per cent to 89 per cent among sexually active unmarried women,” the report reads in part.
Most fertile
The report further found out that women from Samburu and West Pokot counties are more fertile.
The percentage of women who had live births in Samburu stood at 41.5 per cent followed by West Pokot at 32.2 per cent, Narok (25.9 per cent) and Marsabit at 20.6 per cent.
The lowest fertility rates were reported in Murang’a at 3.8 per cent followed by Vihiga county 3.9 per cent, Nyandarua 4.3 per cent and Mombasa (5.4 per cent) among other counties.
The report shows that about 4 in 10 women age 15–19 years who have no education have ever been pregnant, as compared withonly 5 per cent of women who have more than secondary education.
Teenage women in the lowest wealth bracket are more likely to have ever been pregnant than women in the highest bracket.
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