Trust

And every time you speak her name / Does she know how you told me you'd hold me / Until you died, 'til you died / But you're still alive
-Alanis Morissette, You Oughta Know


Very few Ugandan men are faithful to one partner.

I shouldn’t be able to write a statement like that and have it be true; you should be forced to say, “Jess!!! You’re stereotyping, you’re generalizing, you’re being unfair!”
But, I’m not. I wish I were.

I’m teaching health for girls who are in their second year of secondary school (~8th or 9th grade). I tell them that I have a boyfriend, and—I kid you not—the very first thing my girls ask is how I know that he won’t cheat on me while I’m here.

I suppose it’s not an entirely unreasonable question—two years is a long time—but, the fact that it’s the very first question is more than a little surprising. It didn’t just happen once, either. I teach six classes, and I talk to the other students that I don’t teach, too. Upon learning my relationship status, it is the very first thing that everyone wants to know.

For my girls, it’s an initial, subconscious association:
boyfriend = someone who will cheat on you

So, they ask me- how can I deign to think that my particular boyfriend is any different? It is an honest, innocent question; they are not asking it to be funny or to get a rise out of me—they just really want to know. But, how do you answer a question like that? How can you explain trust, to girls who will never, ever fully trust a man? To girls for whom trust is not something real, but something to be scoffed at? To girls who are 99% sure that my boyfriend is going to cheat on me, but that I’m just refusing to believe it?

If a woman trusts a man here, it does not mean that she is in a good relationship. It means that she is naïve. Stupid, even.

So, what DO I tell my students?

I tell them: I know he won’t cheat because we have agreed to be faithful to each other. Because we work hard to be open with each other and to communicate our feelings to one another. Because if our feelings changed, we would tell each other. Because we care about each other and don’t want to hurt each other.

But, I can never say the simple truth: I know because I trust him. I can’t say it, because the word trust carries no meaning for them.

I have the option to trust. My girls don’t.



I’m afraid they never will.