I also wanted to say that I came to this website after reading about the Tampax/Always campaign and being horrified about the lack of sustainability of the project (what will happen when Tampax stops handing out tampons!?!) and also the question simply of what girls are supposed to do with the used pads? Folks are pretty blood-phobic (Just like in the US, only there you get the added anxiety of 20% or so of the population being HIV+) so it’s an issue.

Last thing, about school being a ‘western construct.’ It’s absolutely true that the notion of learning in the classroom as it currently stands in my village is based on the British colonial system. However, the idea of sitting still for that long and listening to someone talk is not new…when I visited with the chief I often spent three to four hours sitting on the floor, listening. That kind of patient listening is actually something that we as Americans might do well to learn from! It’s vitally important for girls to be educated, too…and if that means not missing school I support not missing school! (I appreciate Christine’s remark that work might be sent home, but if you consider how overworked and underpaid the teachers _already_ are, and how few resources exist in the schools, sending work home really imposes a serious extra burden.)

Lili - so do you just put the rag in your pants and that is enough to make it stay without underwear? Tried as I have to find out what these girls in these African communities did before school to absorb the flow, I still didn’t find any concrete answers.

Here is an interesting NYTimes article I came across:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/giving/12GIRLS.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And a good thread on a cloth diapering forum:
http://www.diaperswappers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=280679

Something that I didn’t even touch on in the post is that the whole idea of a school day was probably not something that these communities traditionally had. It was with the advent of the school day that this particular issue came about. During the days a girl was menstruating in the past, she may have just laid low or bled onto the ground. Now, having to attend her classes, she realizes that she has no way to “deal” with her flow. I just hope for these communities to arrive at a sustainable answer.

Thank you again for your thoughts.

During menstruation, most poor women use cloth rags to absorb the blood flow. These emit bad odours and leak easily. For girls sitting in class all day without access to clean water to wash themselves and the rags, this leads to extreme discomfort and embarrassment.

This has all the typical myths — you use cloth if you can’t afford “real” sanitation, cloth rags are smelly, cloth rags leak… I had more leak issues before I started using Gladrags!

Clean water near school should be considered vital for many reasons (including menstruation), and so should education about menstruation. What happened to passing knowledge from mother to daughter about what they should expect as they age? The kids must be terrified if they suddenly start leaking blood and have no idea why!

There are so many things about this story that just depressed me.