Breaking Myths and taboos on Menstruation.

Laughter, joy and swag filled the atmosphere during our recent outreach program on menstrual hygiene management in some schools around the North West region of Cameroon. The shock and awe of one’s first period is not something to quickly forget. That’s why we asked students to spill the beans on theirs as we went from village to village empowering girls in rural areas to stay on track in schools and reach their full potential. There were so many stories, some very wired, some embarrassing, some disgraceful and some just funny. Here is Kusona’s account.

”When I first started menstruating I was 11 and never heard anything about it. I was in pain and I felt like crying. So that’s what I did. I cried. Soon, I realized my cloth was stained. The old piece of cloth I used as pad was all soaked. As I went out to wash my clothes, my father saw me washing my underpants and the cut pieces of my mother’s wrappa that I use during my menses... He asked me what it was and I told him nothing. I was ashamed and afraid. But he demanded an answer and picked up a cane to beat me.

“I dropped everything and ran to my mother. My mother told my father not to hit or scare me because it is normal for girls to experience this. My father said, ‘I send her to school to learn, but instead she goes into the bush with boys to have sex and comes back home.’ My mother tried to explain, but my father did not believe her. He said that menstruation happens only after a girl have had sex with a man and that I am not ready. Then, he beat me and asked me to tell him who did this to me.” He called my grandmother and two other grandmothers in the village and demanded that a virginity test be done on me to see if I had loss my virginity. Later that night when everyone had gone to bed for the night, the grandmothers arrived with an egg and ropes to strap me on my bed in order to insert the egg into my virginal and check. As per their findings, they told my father that I was intact. But my father still did not believe me.

Many girls myself included resonated with Kusona’s story because we also had parents who knew nothing about menstruation thus did not teach us before our first period.

Bola said, “Most of my memories center around feeling mortified that the boys may find out I’m on my period…I remember a dream in which I was wearing white pants to school, and unbeknown to me had a huge red stain on my behind. The boys’ laughter was humiliating, and I woke up feeling deep shame. Though this was a dream, the memory of it stayed with me as if this was an actual event in my life.”

On my path, I discovered the sacredness of my Moon Blood, the depth, beauty and insight that come with conscious flowing, only in my early thirties. Having sat in circles with women and girls around the world, I found that sharing our First Period stories has a profound healing effect.Regardless of how different the details are, women resonate with each other’s stories around the globe: the feelings in them are familiar to ALL of us.

However, persistent taboos around menstruation means that limited information is available to young women. A very vast number of girls had no idea what their period was before they started. These young girls then end up using whatever they can lay their hands on; old clothes, blankets, cotton wool or tissue, and even, very occasionally, grass or leaves. Parents are either unwilling or unable to come up with money for sanitary pads or even discuss the topic with their children.

In other cases, many girls in our program confessed turning to transactional sex with men in order to use the money pads. Mr Chris Nyam of Bangshire told us that girls in that village are literally selling their bodies for sanitary pads,” When we didour findingsin most of the schools in our program, one in ten of the 13 year old girls told us that they had engaged in sex in order to get money to buy pads. These girls have no money, no power. This is just their only option.

It’s only been in the last few years that researchers have finally begun delving into the subject of menstruation, and the impact it has on the lives of young girls and women in low-income countries.That sense of shame, the sense of being guilty of an activity so secret that no one will even talk about it, is then compounded by cultural prejudices and beliefs around menstruation which vary from country to country and region to region. Do you know that in some cultures, it emerges, women are told that eating certain foods during their period will make them smell bad, in others women are sent away from the home or not allowed to bathe, while yet in women is denied to enter places of worship?

Students also told us that schools in particular can be full of pitfalls as there are no adequate bathroom facilities; many have shared latrines, no locks on the doors, and no running water. According to our findings, some teachers are unsympathetic and teaching methods may compound the problem.

The shame, inconvenience, taboo, stigma, myth and embarrassment usually associated with menstruation, which often cause girls in rural areas to lag behind in school work and sometimes even dropout of school will soon be a thing of the past in some parts of Cameroon. Even though change is very difficult and happens slowly, my crew and I and the new generation of campaigners who now are shaking this subject out of the shadows are determined, however, that things must change.

In September of 2016, my team and I went from one village to another running an outreachcampaign to raise awareness on menstrual hygiene management which includes training sessions for young girls where they can ask any question they want, and talk about sexual experiences as well as menstruation in a safe environment. Although it takes a lot of efforts getting them used to, the workshops has seen glimpses of change as girls are now accepting and embracing menstruation with pride and dignity.

Girls in our program are beginning to accept menstruation joyfully, completely and with pride. They are showing it, owning it and modelling it. How awesome. I think menstruation has come into the spotlight in the last few years to give women and girls to make their voices. Pride and self-esteem. This is the kind of world I will love to leave behind, where no woman or girl is shamed or stigmatized because of menstruation, where all girls stay on track in school during their monthly period and where girls get out of the shadows of victimization into light and claim their places as the future leaders they are.

It’s not been a bed of roses running an organization with zero funding depending on personal finances but am very am determined to change the paradigm and rewrite the stories of so many poor girls in my community.Moreover,with great help and partnerships from;

- Days for Girls International New York

-Methodist women of New York

-The Advice project New York

-Girls Prep New York

-Alice Deal Middle school Washington DC

-Elaine France.

-Kioesk Turkey

-Baanki California USA

And Sahki Foundation India-plus many world wishers, we have collected more than 14000individually wrapped pads since the beginning of a new campaign One Million Pads for Progress. Girls like Kusona who used her mother’s old clothes will now have something clean to use. Girls will no long involve themselves in transactional sex in exchange for money to buy pads but will be focus on their school work only.

My first period was awkward, embarrassing and horrifying but it is amazing how all thechallenges havebeen turned into opportunities for whole communities .

A Journey of a thousand Miles sure begins with a single step