Talk to your daughter about menstruation

Till today, some parents in both rural and urban areas in Tanzania shy away from openly talking to their daughters about menstruation. Such silence can have devastating consequences to both the parents and daughter.

Two years ago, a German-based NGO; Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) initiated what has today become the global menstrual hygiene day (MH day).

The day was particularly set with the aim of breaking taboos and raising awareness about the importance of good menstrual hygiene management (MHM) for women and adolescent girls worldwide.

Given the fact that most of the African communities shun away from talking about sex education and reproductive health openly, the day was brought at the right place and time to create interactions among WASH stakeholders.

As of today in Tanzania, lack of proper WASH services inhibits some girls from attending classes during their monthly periods. According to the Water, Health Education and Sanitation Coordinator in the Ministry of Education, Ms Theresia Kuiwite, it is estimated that female students spend up to 60 days at home to serve the five days of the menstrual cycle every year.

Woman brings you different stories and challenges from women who never got an opportunity to get education about menstrual hygiene when they reached the right age.

Selina Joseph, 34, a business woman at Kariakoo market and mother of three children says that she never knew anything about monthly periods until she experienced it for the first time when she was 13 years old.

She still has vivid memories of that day; she was doing dishes and she felt the urge to go to the washroom to relieve herself. that’s when she realised that her clothes were damp. “Before that incident, I didn’t know anything about monthly periods. It came as a big unpleasant surprise to me. I immediately ran to my mother and told her what had happened. I was sobbing because I thought it was life threatening,” Selina recounts.

Selina mother assured her that what she was experiencing was a normal biological cycle and that she had nothing to worry about. “She gave me pieces of old kanga to use during my periods and told me that the cycle will be happening every month,” Selina speaks, and adds, “when talking to me, my mother was very serious and she cautioned me to be very clean. After handing me the old kanga, she also warned me not to play around with boys stating that they will make me pregnant.”

All the warnings and advice that Selina was getting from her mother were new to her. She kept wondering what the sentence ‘play around with boys’ meant. And since her mother never wanted to be questioned on the matter, Selina started her journey to adulthood with a lot of questions and no one was there to give her the answers.

The outcome

Three years later Selina was pregnant, and that was the end of her secondary education in 2000. She missed her monthly period and later she got to learn the aftermath of missing the cycle. She remembered what her mum told her about boys and connected the dots. Unfortunately for her, it was too little too late.

Selina was then sent back to the village where she lived for three more years before she was brought back to town by her auntie who gave her an opportunity to start her life again at Kariakoo market as a small scale business woman.

Selina believes that one way of tackling teen pregnancies and lack of proper menstrual hygiene is through open dialogue between parents and their children at an early age. This will prepare them for challenges they’ll face during adolescence.

Unicef states that investing in adolescents is important to ensuring young people have the skills and opportunities to break entrenched cycles of poverty in Tanzania. With more than a third of the population living in poverty and development budgets over-stretched, the urgency of that investment is clear.

“These young people will fuel the future of the nation. By 2025, when Tanzania aims to achieve the major development breakthroughs defined in its national Vision, the country’s adolescents will be between 25 and 35 years old.” Their ability to contribute to the country’s social and economic advancement “depends a great deal on how we invest in and protect their growth and development during the coming years,” Unicef states in its website.

Between 2004 and 2010, pregnancy among girls aged 15 to 19 years fell by about 12 per cent. Still, more than 40 per cent of young Tanzanian women started bearing children by age 18, leaving the country with one of the highest adolescent pregnancy rates in the world.

Asteria Muigai, 30, a nursery school teacher at St Anton of Padua in Segeraea says that, there is a lot of silence regarding menstrual hygiene issues in our society. Before she quit studies due to unexpected pregnancy 18 years ago, none of her parents or teachers educated her on the connection of monthly periods and pregnancy.

She lived with her auntie who as well did not explain the dangers of having unprotected sex. On realising she was pregnant her auntie did not abandon her and the child. However she spent more than six years at home raising her child until she was given another chance to go for Early Childhood Education and became a kindergarten teacher.

After what she had gone through, Asteria calls upon all parents to open up and share with their children the important information on how to value their dignity and the proper ways to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies at puberty age.

“I regret that my auntie did not tell me about my body changes that come along with adolescence. As a result I involved in romantic affairs with boys oblivious of consequences and consequently I became pregnant. I could’ve also gotten other sexually transmitted diseases during that period,” says Asteria.

Adding to that she says that, after what she went through she always talks to young girls even those who are not her relatives. Whenever she meets young girls and has an opportunity to have a chat with them, she teaches them on how value their bodies. She tells them that they have big future ambitions that they need to achieve so they need to be careful.

Other challenges

Apart from the silence on menstrual hygiene being the main challenge in the society today, unavailability of sanitary materials is also a big issue.

Speaking to Woman, Dar es Salaam based gynecologist Julius Mbena states that sanitary towel is a very intimate product that is used on a very sensitive part of the body. This shows the importance of being extra careful when dealing with menstrual hygiene.

If sanitary wear can cause health problems if not well chosen, what about the piece of old clothes that are used by poor young girls who cannot afford to buy sanitary pads?

“Improper use of sanitary wear can cause fungus, a urinary tract infection (UTI), Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs),” says Dr Mbena.

Health information shows that 50 per cent of women in the world suffering from gynecological diseases have used poor quality sanitary towels. Every woman will need to use sanitary towels for about 30 to 40 years.

Adding to that Dr Mbena says, every female shall use roughly 15,000 pieces in her lifetime. Most women who use poor quality towels suffer from serious gynecological diseases such as causalgia, cauterization, skin pruritus, fever, headache and bellyache.

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