There is general ‘nonchalance’ that has steadily replaced the doom and gloom that HIV evoked in people two decades ago. Today, words like ‘condom’ or ‘penis’ no longer provoke discomfort and more or less sound as innocent as ‘church’ or ‘water.’

The society in the 21st century is freer such that the mindset of yester years has been replaced with more radical thinking especially on the sexual front.

Consider the latest info from the ministry of health suggesting that nearly one fourth of Kenya’s prostitutes  believe that ‘sex from behind’ is safer to conventional ‘missionary’ sex. This belief is worrying in view of homosexuality embedding its subculture in Kenya. 

Dr George Githuka – who worked with National AIDS and STI Control Programme (NASCOP) at the time we spoke last year said that anal intercourse increases chances of being infected with an STI – HIV in this case. Dr Githuka touched a little on the history of HIV.

“It was early 1980s when doctors noticed a disease that caused wasting before killing its patients. They noted that it was very rife among men who had sex with other men,” Githuka offered. It is only years later that it would be discovered why gay people presented a higher affinity to infection by the virus.

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Githuka says: “The anus, compared to the vagina, does not lubricate naturally during intercourse. It is dry. This increases friction and therefore tears and wounds through which the virus gets easily inoculated.”

John Mathenge, who proudly fights for rights of commercial male sex workers, also held the view, at the time, that gay hookers were off the hook no matter the number of clients they were handling since “You have to walk around with lots of lubrication. It reduces friction and therefore chances of infection...” 

But health experts in sexually transmitted diseases have debunked this notion and just because ‘kufunguliwa boot’ does not lead to pregnancy does not mean it makes it safer and commercial sex workers of either gender, are thus at risk of higher infection rate with the HIV/Aids virus. 

That strong whiskey could make you a sadist-Report  Researchers from Innsbruck University in Austria have released results of a survey they conducted on 1000 subjects, showing that bitter taste preferences are linked to malevolent personality traits.

‘The results suggest that how much people like bitter-tasting foods and drinks is stably tied to how dark their personality is,’ they write in their report.

The team, comprising psychologists, determined that people who seem to have a penchant for coffee and tonic water tended to exhibit signs of Machiavellianism, sadism, and narcissism. They were duplicitous and self-serving, cold-hearted and lacking in empathy, vain and selfish, and more likely to derive pleasure from other people’s pain. Whether there is truth in these findings is subject for further studies.