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Kenya: The Sanitary Pad Banks of Ledero Village, Samburu

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4 years ago

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Until last year, 43-year-old Jesinta Lesirdonkera, could hide in her house for five days every month. During this time, she lost about Sh6,000 in income from her business.

The fear of her husband seeing her with clothing soiled with her menses was unimaginable.

Without anything to prevent the free flow of the menses, she would wrap a piece of cloth over her dress or skirt, and hide the clothes she changed. She would later wash them in a nearby dam.

The topic of menses is an issue she cannot even discuss with fellow women at Kisima market, southeast of Maralal town, Samburu Central, Samburu County; where she sells bracelets and necklaces. Her prices range from Sh150 to Sh400, a piece, and she sells at least three pieces daily.

“There is no way I could go to the market in such a state. To attract a jeer from women?” she poses as she adjusts a lime green shawl over her shoulders.

She is clearly uncomfortable with the question of how she managed her economic activities during menstruation.

“Those (periods) are things we never talked about. I never told my husband I was on my menses. How could I even start the conversation? It was such a shame,” she says during this interview at Ledero Dispensary where she has come to collect sanitary towels.

She receives three packs, each containing eight pads that will be shared between her and her two daughters.

In essence, the dispensary is a pad bank, an innovative system that has influenced dismantling of taboos associated with menstruation, giving women like Ms Lesirdonkera the freedom to inform their spouses about their days of the month.

And the men are becoming more aware of their role in ending period shame.

“I call this development,” says Ms Lesirdonkera, a resident of Ndikir location in Ledero village, Samburu Central, in reference to her knowledge of existence and use of pads, as well as the comfort of speaking about periods without fear of shame.

A pad bank is like an automated teller machine, but in this case, the women and girls visit either the dispensary or a house of a community volunteer, at their convenient time for a stock of the pads, given for free. There are the three of those pad banks here in Ledero village serving more than 100 girls and women.

While the teenagers and younger women adopt use of the pads, the older women are still ashamed of openly relating themselves with menses.

Hellen Lekaldero, in-charge of one of the pad banks in the village says only adolescents and women in their 20s come for the pads.

“No woman in her 30s and above has ever come for the pads,” she says.

“So, during the weekends, I take the pads to their homes. To avoid scaring them off, I pack them together with a packet of sugar so that it looks like I’m delivering sugar. And once they see the pads, they quickly hide them from their husbands or children.”

In this Samburu village, nearly all women above 20s were married off as young as 10 years, and never managed to complete school.

Due to lack of an education and exposure, they dearly hold onto the decade-old taboos such as avoiding open discussions about sexual and reproductive health.

For instance, Ms Lesirdonkera, estimates to have been married for 30 years. That could mean she was married at 13 years.

“I have never been to any classroom. I only learnt Swahili from frequent interactions with people,” she says.

George Lolopeta, 42, who often rides his 22-year-old wife to Ledero Dispensary for the stock, is happy to be part of her reproductive health journey.

“I was never concerned that she had menses. That was her problem to deal with. But now I know why it is important for a woman to use a pad and I happily bring her here with my motorcycle to collect the pads,” he says.

“These days, whenever I’m in a group of other men, I bring up the discussion. Often, they look at me with shock and disbelief. A few later become receptive of the idea, others cannot still imagine it’s possible for a man to talk about periods.”

This awareness is slowly moving away the cultural rocks that made it impossible for girls to share their period experiences with their parents.

“I didn’t know how to tell my mother I had periods. I was so scared. I thought it could be disrespectful of me to open up with her about my menses,” says Esther Laipalei, 19, who started her menses while in Class Five.

At the time, she would wear two pairs of underwear and stay off school till the end of the menses that lasted four to five days.

“Now, it is no longer a secret. I can walk up to my mother and ask for Sh50 to buy the pads,” says Ms Laipalei who gets her supply from Ledero Dispensary.

The pad banks initiative is an idea developed and implemented by Bright Future Foundation, a Samburu-based charity focused on promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls in the county.

Before the pad banks were established last year, the foundation spent a year to educate the men, women and girls on menstrual health.

Co-founder Faustin Naimasie, points to a difficult start in demystifying the myths on the subject.

“In 2019, when we started the conversations at the community level, the men, women and girls were resistant to the idea. But overtime, they have become conscious of the fact that menses is a biological process that is part and parcel of a girl and woman’s life, and there is no shame to it,” she explains.

With the pad banks they sought to bring the message on menstrual health to the households in this village while eliminating the girls’ and women’s inaccessibility to the sanitary towels.