WUNRN
UGANDA/EAST
AFRICA BREAKS THE SILENCE ON MENSTRUATION TO KEEP GIRLS IN SCHOOL
Direct Link to Full 34-Page 2012
Research Report:
Understanding and
Managing Menstruation, was launched by Uganda’s Ministry of Education
and Sports at East Africa’s first national menstrual hygiene management
conference. The 50-page reader has photos and a section on how to make
reusable pads at home, and sections for parents, guardians, peers, friends and
schoolboys. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS
- When Peninah Mamayi got her period lastJanuary, she
was scared, confused and embarrassed. But like thousands of other girls in the
developing world who experience menarche having no idea what menstruation is,
Mamayi, who lives with her sister-in-law in a village in Tororo, eastern
Uganda, kept quiet.
“When I went to the toilet I had blood on my knickers,” she told
IPS. “I was wondering what was coming out and I was so scared I ran inside the
house and stayed there crying.
“I just used
rags. I feared telling anybody.”
Not having access to or being able to
afford disposable sanitary pads or tampons like millions of their Western
counterparts, desperate Ugandan girls will resort to using the local ebikokooma
leaves, paper, old clothes and other materials as substitutes or even, as a
health minister told a menstrual hygiene management conference this week,
sitting in the sand until that time of the month is over.
“We always try
to give them something to use at school, just at school,” Lydia Nabazzine, a
teacher at Mulago Private Primary School in Kampala, where about 300 out of 500
students are female, told IPS.
“When they go
home we don’t know how they go about it, because we cannot afford funding up to
home level.”
But the
2012 Study
on menstrual management in Uganda, conducted by the Netherlands
Development Organisation (SNV) and IRC International Wash and Sanitation Centre
in seven Ugandan districts, found that over 50 percent of senior female
teachers confirmed there was no provision for menstrual pads
for schoolgirls.
When some girls
have their period, they may miss up to 20 percent of their total school year
due to the humiliation of not having protection, according to separate research
from the World Bank. This profoundly affects their academic potential.
“Those days
when I was menstruating I could be absent for up to five days a month until
menstruation had stopped,” recalled Mayami.
It’s a
continent-wide problem. The United Nations Children’s Fund says one in 10 African girls skipped school
during menstruation. Some drop out entirely because they lack access
to effective sanitary products.
A number of
recent initiatives have, however, tried to address this.
On May 28 this year, the world marked the
first Menstrual Hygiene Day to
help “break
the silence and build awareness about the fundamental role that good
menstrual hygiene management (MHM) plays in enabling women and girls to reach
their full potential.”
On Aug. 14
– 15, East Africa’s first national menstrual hygiene management conference, which has the
theme “breaking the silence on menstruation, keep girls in school,” has been
taking place in Uganda’s capital Kampala.
At least 100
schoolteachers, schoolgirls – and boys – NGOs, including Network for Water and
Sanitation (NETWAS) Uganda, civil
society members and others are taking part in the two-day event. They’re
calling on the government to put in place a menstrual hygiene management school
policy. They also want the government to provide free sanitary pads to girls in
schools, like
neighbouring Kenya has done.
Despite keeping
silent about the horrors of menstruation for months, Mamayi shared with the
conference attendees the solution she found to that time of the month.
The student,
now 13, had been walking home from school when some older pupils told her,
“madam [the teacher] said menstruation is a normal thing for every girl.”
“So I asked
them about it,” she told IPS.
“Now I’m
using AFRIPads.”
Invented by the
eponymous Uganda-based social business, AFRIPads are washable cloth sanitary
towels designed to provide effective and hygienic menstrual protection for up
to a year.
One Ugandan, Dr. Moses Kizza Musaazi,
a senior lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at Kampala’s Makerere University, has also invented the
environmentally-friendly MakaPads, from papyrus reeds and waste paper. MakaPads
are said to be the only trademarked biodegradable sanitary pads made in
Africa.
Mamayi said the
re-useable pads work out to be 5,500 Ugandan shillings (2.11 dollars) a year,
compared to the 30,000 shillings (11.49 dollars) that disposable pads
would have set her back.
“Now when I go
somewhere [when I have my period] I sit and am comfortable,” said Mamayi. “I’m
not bothered by anything. I don’t worry whether I’ve got anything on my skirt.
I don’t miss school.”
She added: “I’m
going to tell my friends that menstruation is a normal thing in girls.
“I want my
friend also to be free, to tell their parents to buy for them pads. Let them
not fear.”
Breaking
the culture of silence around menstruation is the aim of a new book, Understanding
and Managing Menstruation, launched by Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports at
the conference. The 50-page reader has photos and a section on how to make
reusable pads at home, and sections for parents, guardians, peers, friends and
schoolboys.
Maggie Kasiko,
a gender technical advisor at the Ministry of Education and Sports, told IPS
that the government hoped the book would reach as many students, teachers and
parents across the country as possible.
Dennis Ntale,
18, a senior five student at co-ed Mengo Senior School in Kampala, said he
didn’t know what menstruation was when he encountered a fellow student with her
period in class earlier this year, and tried to comfort her. It was only
sometime later when he relayed the incident to his male friends and they told
him she was “undergoing her MP [menstrual period].”
“They’re
[teachers] not teaching this to the boys in schools,” Ntale told IPS.
“I believe boys
should be informed about this because there are many of them out there who have
no idea about this.”
He said for
girls, “pads are as good as schoolbooks”.
“If you don’t
have that pad she won’t be able to do a thing,” Ntale said. “[We should] make
sure she has what will keep her in school.”
Kasiko said the
Ministry of Education and Sports was continuing to ensure schools had separate
facilities for boys and girls, with the girls having washrooms and
changing rooms where they could bathe and change, had access to clean water,
extra pads and Panadol.
But she said
she didn’t see the government providing free pads to girls “in the short-term
or the long-term”.
“Starting to
distribute sanitary towels to each and every girl, every month, is quite a cost
for the ministry when you look at all the other areas that the ministry
needs to take care of,” she said.
“That, our
guidelines for Universal
Primary Education (UPE) is very clear, is a role of parents. It’s
sanitary wear. Just like you buy a panty for your child, you should be
responsible for buying a sanitary towel for your child.
Kasiko added:
“But we’ll support the parents and work together with the parents to give them
knowledge to ensure the environment is clean and girls stay in school.”
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