Cleanliness is the most important thing.
You should smell good, and you should be dressed up.
I’ll visit you tomorrow.
Make your mama proud.
We’re all coming tomorrow to check on you.

I decided not to have any contact with men when I was 17 years old.
Some people told me, “You’ve become too conservative.”
While others told me, “May God bless you.”
And a lot of my friends stopped talking to me altogether.
But no one told me how to deal with my fiance.

I was 19 years old when I decided to have sex.
I didn’t know what sex was.
I didn’t know what a physical relationship was.
Everything I knew about them came from the media.
sex, sex education, sexuality, body image, gender violence

We were all girls like you once.
I was a young girl just like you before marrying your father.
We all went through the same things.
We’d just play sports and take a cold shower.

I learned one day that my neighbor whom I used to play with was getting married.
She was almost 16 years old.
“I’ve got something that my husband will take from me and throw away tomorrow morning,” she said.