Underage girls miss classes for lack of sanitary towels

A paltry Sh100 cost Fatuma (not her real name) her decency, dignity and normal life.

Her heavy flow meant she used to miss classes and so when her boda boda ‘friend’ offered to help her get home faster plus Sh100 for a sanitary towel almost two years ago, she thought she had a saviour.

Only for her dream saviour to become her worst nightmare.

The man defiled her and she became pregnant.

Fatuma, 13, now does not want anything to do with boys and has many times contemplated dropping out of school to fully engage in rummaging through the Mwakirunge dumpsite for food and anything to sell.

Speaking to the Star on Thursday, Topister Juma, Muslim for Human Rights gender officer, said most of the time Fatuma is secluded and has become an introvert.

Juma has been counselling Fatuma for almost two years now and says she is slowly improving.

She was only 11 when she suffered her most horrifying ordeal in her life.

“At the time when not in school, she used to rummage through the Mwakirunge dumpsite so she could at least fend for her ailing mother and siblings,” Juma said.

According to Juma, poverty, lack of knowledge and illiteracy contributes to almost 90 per cent of the school dropout cases due to early pregnancies and marriages in areas like Mwakirunge in Mombasa and the rural parts of Kilifi.

“Many who drop out of school because of pads and cannot afford them. They are from poor families. This leaves the adolescent girls in rural areas vulnerable to sex pests and predators,”  Juma said.

She has called on the government to make sanitary towels readily available for school-going girls.

Fujita Corporation public relations and communication officer Beatrice Mbeyu said it is issues like Fatuma’s that prompted them to think of ways to help reduce school dropout cases, early and unwanted pregnancies due to lack of sanitary towels.

On Friday Fujita Corporation, the firm contracted to construct the second phase of the Dongo Kundu bypass, partnered with Mombasa county and the Jomvu NG-CDF to distribute 12,000 sanitary towels to schools in the slum areas of Bangladesh in Jomvu.

More than 2,000 pupils in four schools will benefit from sanitary towels with each school set to get 500 sanitary towels monthly for the next six months.

Mbeyu said the 12,000 sanitary towels will in the long run help prevent early pregnancies, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and address rape and defilement cases of young girls by predators.

They selected Bangladesh because it is densely populated and most of the residents are underprivileged thus exposing the girl child to dangers including sex pests.

“Most people in this area are less privileged and cannot afford most basic needs,”  Mbeyu said.

She said such a situations leads girls in puberty to look for ways to get sanitary towels through desperate and dubious means.

Speaking during the World Menstrual Health Day celebrations in Bangladesh, Mbeyu said that some predators take advantage of such desperateness and entice underage girls with pads in exchange for sex.

They then end up defiled and some impregnated or infected with STIs, like in Fatuma’s case.             

“Girls in puberty are not supposed to miss out on things like sanitary towels,”  Mbeyu said.

Ramla Ramadhan, Jomvu constituency manager, said the government has to come up with ways to ensure the girl child is well taken care of and protected from sex pests.

“Women leaders in Mombasa should do more to help girls, especially in the less privileged areas like Bangladesh, get sanitary towels to concentrate on their studies,” Ramadhan said.

Her team contributed 3,000 sanitary towels to the course.

She however said four more public schools in Jomvu also need sanitary towels.

Juma said the national and county governments should come up with laws that will ensure there are free sanitary towels in public areas.

“Just like they did with condoms, sanitary towels should be made available free of charge in public spaces as periods in most cases find girls unaware,” Juma said.

This, she said will reduce cases of absenteeism due to monthly periods for girls from humble backgrounds who cannot afford sanitary pads.

“Some have heavy flows and when the time comes they stay at home until the flow stops. That is valuable time missed in class,” Juma said.

Statistics from the Ministry of Education published in 2018 indicated that some girls miss 13 learning lessons in a term because of their monthly periods.

In Kenya, it is estimated that about 65 per cent of women and girls are unable to afford sanitary pads and situation is so dire that in a 2015 study of 3,000 Kenyan women, Dr Penelope Phillips-Howard found one in 10, 15-year-old girls were having sex to get money for sanitary ware.

In 2017, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed the Basic Education Amendment Act into law placing the responsibility of providing free, sufficient and quality sanitary towels on the government.

The law also compels the government to provide a safe and environmentally sound mechanism for disposal of the sanitary towels.

Two years after the law came into effect, there were concerns that schoolgirls were not receiving sanitary towels despite the government allocating millions to support the programme.

Things became complicated in February 2018 when the project was moved from the Education Ministry to the Ministry of Gender.

Amina Ali, an 11-year-old pupil at St Mary’s Bangladesh primary school, said she was happy to receive the sanitary towels because of what she has been going through every month.

“I would like to tell my fellow pupils not to hide when that time comes. If they are unable to get the pads, they can ask for help from the female teachers or parents,” Ali said.

Mbeyu said Fujita, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility, has been promoting the girl child, ensuring they go to school.

“They are future leaders and must be taken care of today,” Mbeyu said.

“We are not all about building bridges in Kenya. We also want to contribute in our little way towards the society in Kenya.”

Sanitary pads range from Sh50 to Sh100.

Edited by Kiilu Damaris