“Risky Teenage Love” – Five years later

There are two principles I was proving in those years because of my work: everybody is summoned to make science, and your professional title does not limit to the scientific field you want to explore. After this, I can say that in the difficult and almost misunderstood scientific divulgation market, I’ve got achievements I’m proud about. Across Piura Region, the journalists who specialize in that are a little handful, and I’m the youngest among them, I guess.

The scientific divulgation, in my opinion, is important because it allows to enable the curiosity of the audience about something they knew a few or ignored at all. And the curiosity you break out comes from your own curiosity, that is also based on the curiosity of some proffessionist, specialist in a science topic, who asked a question that seemed unnecessary one blessed day, went into it, and realized at least that he was found a key for a door that was not open even by using dynamite, or that we were sat down on pure dynamite, and we were not aware, neither. And that was the case of Risky Teenage Love (Somewhere Piura Andes), published on El Regional de Piura, in his original Spanish version, on July 30^th, 2014.

The story’s idea came from the curiosity of Obstetrician Marco Paulini Espinoza when he asked how much the teenagers of the fifth grade Bellavista de Cachiaco high-school, Pacaipampa District (Ayabaca Province), knew about a condom in terms of contraceptive method. And upon that knowledge basis, what attitude they had about its using.

Paulini took the issue because he was doing his Rural and Uptown Health Service (Serums, as its acronyme in Spanish) between ending-2013 and beginning 2014, just in that village. The story of how he landed there is epic, and the better is he tell you live by himself someday.

You will say – why to get focused the study in teenagers just months before leaving the basic regular education?Simple, folks. One of the strongest problems we have across Piura, and about what we can’t chant victory yet, is the teenage pregnancy, what means to have pregnants between 13 (11 in some countries) and 19 years old. And some stories we gathered at Piura Andes revealed us there are pregnants under 13 years old.

It’s supposed the teenage is  when many

women and many menare thinking what to do abouth their life so they mature. Then, whatever the reason, a boy or a girl comes on, and much of these plans postergate or abort, what, in many cases, stresses the poverty conditions. And Pacaipampa is one of Piuras districts with highest poverty levels. Add to this, Piura is one of Peru’s regions that has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, 14% to 16% in the last five years, above the Peruvian rate around 13%.

Plus, if you invite Marco anytime to hold an educational session, a conference, or you include him in a debate, that he tells you about the levels of existent gender-based violence, which is very engaged to machismo and the precarious life quality there is in many parts of Andean Peru.

As I ever say, the value of that investigation was nobody requested it to him. He was proactive about making it, and he proposed it as a thesis project (despite he had sustained and approved his own undergrade thesis months before) and, in fact, the original work  from the four-and-a-half-page story was almost 100 A4-size pages, which we excerpted the part of results, conclusions, and we added an introduction to give it a journalistic value, so we sent for releasing.

Of course, that is the brief story. The manner how it born is almost funny. It was around nine at night on July 15^th, 2014, when Marco talked me quite sad because he was trying to engage in a job after his Serums in Pacaipampa, unsuccessfully.

In my effort to comfort him, because that was the reason, I proposed him to work on some topic of his area that could awake the public interest. Then, we had one and a half months meeting each other, and one of the recurrent themes was his life in Pacaipampa. I presume, because of his reaction, that my proposal sounded him like fried egg over ice cream, but he didn’t say no, what was a good signal.

The next he did was to recuperate his whole papers he had brought from the Andes and he put to process them into one of these softwares specialized in statistical work, then he began to write the full document adding almost one hundred pages. We can say he was all the possible time to do it then, and it was usefully advantaged free time too.

Let’s make elipsis and skip to 2014 Peruvian Anniversary. While everybody was rested or got drunk meaning to celebrate Peru, Marco and I spent a whole day –lunch included- working the story, and messaging the poor El Regional de Piura’s publisher Andrés Vera that, please, wait for us because it was to arrive any way before the closure time, after I spent three days pitching the idea to him. If I don’t remind bad, we became to send it with photos attached, then or twelve minutes to five in the afternoon, one of the deadlines, and very despite our web producers, who wanted already to go home for resting. Did I mention it was July 28^th?

One day later, 29th, we changed the original title maybe twice until it stood in its actual writing country song-style. Well, the story was produced at a rural environment, so the literary license was appropriate.  Then, I figured out the rural philosophy was making a short circuit wwith all the policies of pregnancy prevention or sexual initiation postergation, and, in my opinion, the answers the teenagers gave were romantically absurd, like I could make it with my boy friend not using a protection as a love proof. So, forgive me, but there is nointerculturality you allege about: or you apply rationality to your life project, or you waste your life by opening or closing the eyes, not that you’re thinking of because it could sound quite ugly.

Yes, of course. I was also a teenager, and I also belief I could bring down all the starss to the being who you love to. But as you grow up, and you understand that the metaphoric sounds nice but scientifically improbable, and it also generates a vulnerable scenario for a part of the population, there’s no worthy romanticism. Or you act with maturity, or you are part of the problem.

Thus, as Marco says, if you are not to protect, at least see how you are going to prevent, and the condom has proven it can be until 97% success for avoiding pregnancies and 95%success for prevention of sexually transmited diseases, including HIV/AIDS. And in a region like Piura, that is 150 thousand people up to reach two million habitants, according to the last Census, the decisions that teenagers and young take regarding to their sexuality are, indeed, a public health issue, especially when you have 5^th-grade high-school kids having a 7% knowledge and 5% positive attitude before the using of condom. And the other 95%, what?, I mean.

And if we carry that to public policies management, that have actually accostummed the poorest people to government or corporate dependence, then you understand the transcendence of investigation works wit those characteristics. Look – I don’t say this is the only one of its kind, what I say is this is one of the few when the author trusted in a journalist and decided to make it public.

That is the value of Marco Paulini’s study, and that is the value that almost nobody , except the colleagues of Radio Cutivalú (add to El Regional de Piura’s crew, I mean), could see once published, and, forgive me, even the efforts of the Regional Government of Piura for decreasing the rates in some districts, where they inclusive have put specialized offices in teenagers assistance, had the expected result despite the work, neiter.

I don’t insinuate it’s lost time and money. What I say is that no matter the effort our authorities do, the problem is the cultural environments where teenagers and young grow up, and where an anti-Semitic-style campaign, because it is so, anti-Semitic, Hitlerian, says there’s no right to act. Maybe no acting, but actually displaying enough scientific information for teenagers and young to take their own decisions, because if you don’t teach them to be responsible since kids, and realizing Maluma and company, and the Peruvian union of cumbia as well, are fucking brainwashers, tthey won’t be responsible along their personal, family, professional, and social life. Already, if with all the information, they insist to disgrace their lives, it’s their business, but the government already played its part, no matter if it seems pretty cruel.

Paulini himself repeated the task in 2016, this time with family planning service users in Huasimal de la Solana, Lancones District (Sullana Province), now about the attitude regarding the emergency oral contraceptive, that recently was supported by the Peruvian justice for being distributed in the health public system for free, and he found again that cultural and religious believes of the population, many of them based again upon the machismo, ended to put in risk the life of women and kept many violence cases ending in unwanted pregnancies, and the obsessive attitude of mothers who confessed they would control the sexuality of their kidsas much as forbidding the use of contraceptive methods.

And what deserved Marco Paulini in exchange for its effort? Nothing, no thanks neiter. Even with the published story and blasting in hits (all Marco’s stories ended 2014 with more than 20  thousand hits on El Regional de Piura), the Health director entity, at least in regional level, felt like a mosquito flew, slapping included. Maybe the administration of Jorge Camino, instead, recognized him on behalf of Sullana Province Municipality, and La Matanza District Municipality invited him to hold an educational session in its townhall and a local high-school (then the mayor was Nelson Mío, now Morropón Province’s Mayor), but Pacaipampa District’s and less the Ayabaca Province’s reported not to be aware about.

OK, they maybe had not to be aware, but if you’re an authority concerned to solve problems in your community, at least you had to phone him: “Obstetrician Paulini, and what action plan do you suggest?” And that feature had –well, has- actually an action plan: to insist in educating for prevention, and making closer the sexual and reproductive health services to teenagers. Eventually, the Peruvian government has implemented the second one. The first one, I insist, with this fake veil of the moral has sserved to disguising doctrinal-religious argues, instead of widely technical-scientific debates. Because in those cases, you forgive me, the science will save us. There’s no other way.

And Marco Paulini proved it when he was assigned by the Luciano Castillo Colonna Health Under-Regional Bureau  to the posts network at Sapillica District, reaching with that crew and the prominent district’s institutions the feat, because it is so, to reduce the annual amount of maternal deaths (it was three) to zero (yes, zero) by ending 2016, record that held, until I checked out in our archive, during 2017. By the way, the machismo –the negative cultural patterns, again- is one of the causes for maternal mortality, at least in that territory.

That’s why is too important the professional contribution he did to the international campaign One Billion Rising from Sullana, for fighting against the gender-based violence, understanding that the effort can’t last one only day but everyday, every minute, or his virtual participation to the 2014 Annual Conference of Businesspersons, held in Paracas, Ica, where El Regional de Piura had a pretty lot to do.

And that’s what I celebrate five years later. That the solutions journalism, like it’s called now that type of the contents production, had generated, first, curiosity in the audience, second, the need to see if it’s about a general pattern or an isolated fact (we realized it’s the option number one),  and third, these plans have to be pitched into the existent social forums for these facts to reverse or prevent.

And in the scientific divulgation journalism, the investigative journalism, or the solutions journalism, or just journalism, if you don’t ally to someone who never went into a newsroom to explore these action plans, you’ll hardly see that a reality changes.

And in this point, I want to remember the divulgation work that Marco does on his own blog https://marcopaulini.blogspot.com/ that has given us the satisfaction of getting positive interactions in English-speaker audience, at very complicated markets as the United States, England, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and even Jordan and Afghanistan. And they are organic twitterers, just in case.

Although nobody else cares about it, I’m proud for making that little milestone, and making that the contens we have produced help you to take better decisions. And of course, I’m proud of Piura’s talent that continues to row ahead and above, that follows to evolve. I continue to generate contents that way, Marco follows working wit me when he can and is free from his Human Medicine studies at Piura’s César Vallejo University, pretty scored by the way. I’m excited to believe there will be an upcoming challenge, and we’ll take it for sure!