"Is Silence Golden?"

“Silence is golden” so goes the famous saying.

But is silence really golden?

Is silence golden if I have a condition that will affect other people around me in a negative way but can't say it for fear of shame?

Is silence golden when my teacher asks me why I missed my classes and I can't answer him because I was in my periods and I had no proper sanitary pad?

Is silence golden when I am repeatedly raped by my step father but my lips are sealed for fear of his threats of beating me and stopping to pay my school fees?

Is silence golden when I can't go to the clinic to get medicine for the STI that is affecting my body for fear of my mother finding out?

Is silence golden when I am bleeding out because I carried out an unsafe abortion for fear to be expelled from school? 

Is silence golden I have just discovered I have HIV but can't afford to shame my family so I shut my mouth and I can’t get ART?

Is silence golden when I see my body changing in ways I can't understand but will be looked at as perverse if I ask my mother or teacher what is happening to me?

Is silence golden when I want to know more about safer sex but don't know who to ask?

The other day, my friend Naila was chased out of home by her father for bringing the family name to shame having got pregnant at sixteen.

Anthony was shunned by his peers after he told them that he was born with HIV.

Mariah was laughed at by the entire class when she stood up having soiled her white uniform skirt with her menstrual blood.

When I told my mother about what my step father’s nightly visits to my bed, she called me a liar.

Pete became the laughing stock of the entire school when the senior male teacher found him with condoms in his pocket.

If I remain silent, I will keep the status quo. Everything will be okay at least. No one will ask questions or look at me as a weirdo. My mother won't know what my step father is doing to me in the middle of the night. My colleagues will be spared the knowledge of my contagious condition. I will not be laughed at.

So is silence really golden?

Compiled by Sylvia Nalubega