This is my 2nd year since I joined the Movement Against Sexual Exploitation and to be honest every day is a new day for me. Every E-mail that I receive from NCOSE either teaches me something or empowers me for something. This week I received an e-mail reminding me about the WRAP week. Since I did not get to participate in it last year, this time I was more than enthusiastic to carry the flag.
WRAP (White Ribbon Against Pornography) Week came at the right time when schools in Uganda are open for me 
to talk about the dangers of pornography & sexual exploitation. For my WRAP Week, I chose one Secondary School (Buddo Senior Secondary School) and the administration scheduled me for Tuesday afternoon to share with the Advanced Learners (A-Level pupils). We talked about many things. I talked about my mistakes when I was in school. We talked about drugs and how they affect us when we’re in school and, above all we talked about porn and its damaging effects on our academic performance.
I shared my story of how I first encountered porn on VHS cassettes at my neighbor’s house at the age of 13. I told them that this one mistake was the the beginning of a long battle with porn. My academic performance declined and I became a failure in school. I was always the last and this left my family disappointed with me since they had to sacrifice a lot to put me in school.
I shared with these young ones that when porn comes in your life, it eats up all the space in such a way that Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, History, Geometry don’t have anywhere to go. That’s exactly what happened to me.
I shared with them that porn and school can ever be friends with each other. They cannot blend. It’s just like Water & Oil.
I told them that the more pornography I consumed during my semester break, the more my life was damaged. It led me to viewing girls at school as sexual objects and I became sexually active at an early age. I told them that the more porn I viewed, the more sex I craved, and this led to another long time addiction in my life: I became a sex addict. I told them that watching porn in these early years pushed me to start buying prostitutes off the streets of Kampala and no one in my family knew about it.
Porn made me think that women are just sex objects since I could buy anyone I wanted at any time. This is something that pushed me further from buying women off the street, to selling women to other men around Kampala. In addition to my sex addiction, I became a sex-trafficker in East Africa. Looking back, this was the worst part of my life. I told these students that porn can never become your friend. It will always betray you. It betrays the young and the old leading them to do more crazy things that are imaginable.
In fact I gave a demonstration of a Polythene bag that’s full of clean water. That was me when I was born. Innocent, ignorant and full of every potential to become successful in life. Things turned around when I watched Porn. My life was damaged and potential started dripping out. The more Porn I watched the more holes that were created in my life as you see the Polythene bag.
Lastly with all the students, we made a commitment to give-up with porn. We realized that porn isn’t our friend. Every boy and girl picked up a pen & paper and wrote a “Commitment” letter never to watch porn no matter the temptations in our sexualized culture.
After writing our commitment letters, we made our WRAP signs. It’s funny that I hadn’t carried any white ribbons so these kids decided to make their own “ribbons”. We made them out of white paper. It was fun seeing them make this sign. We realized that in order to perform well, we needed to drop porn and concentrate on cleaning up our heads. To cover the holes in our lives. It was fun doing this.
That’s how we spent our WRAP Campaign. I love sharing with kids in schools and I’ll do it till my last breath. One of the teachers who was present during my presentation pulled me aside and asked me why I fight porn.
I told him, “I fight porn because I know what it did to me.” I wouldn’t wish it on any boy or girl.
Happy WRAP week,
Godfrey Kuteesa
