Let's stop Period Stigma

Last week on Tuesday during the 9pm news on one of our national broadcasting channels, one of the main headlines read,” a class six pupil at Kabiangek primary school in Konoin, Bomet county took her own life claiming one of the teachers at her school picked on her and mocked her for soiling her uniform with her menses.”

First I felt sad and angry which I am still carrying the anger upto now almost a week later for many reasons but I will talk about two or three;

1. It is very sad that this young naïve class 6 girl who is probably 11 or 12years old had put all her hope in this female teacher that she will understand her being she was in school and instead of helping and guiding the poor girl the whole grown up teacher actually mocked her when all she expected was love and care and being assured all this is normal and sacred and be shown love she expected, be told how to handle herself during this time. When she went home, she could not take the embarrassment she had gone through in school. She shared with the mother but again maybe she didn’t get enough assurance that everything will be OK and this was normal. She waited until the mother left and she committed suicide.This is a life cut short because we are still living in a world where periods, sex education are still a taboo to be discussed in our homes and schools.


2. Our government has been in the past 3-4years been allocating millions of money for these girls to benefit from the free sanitary towels but it has been pure PR and afew individuals putting the money in their pockets.Since we started TPA, in all the schools and children homes we have visited we have never come across a beneficiary of free sanitary towels and that makes me sad. That is why as an organization we came up with a program that benefits the girls we visit in both the schools and homes #ThePadCampaign and we dubbed it “She shouldn’t miss a class because she can’t afford a packet of sanitary towels.”


3. As African parents we need to stop treating sex education as taboo. Menstruation is as normal as peeing only that this applies to women only. We need to teach also these young boys that they should be a sister’s keeper.

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Be Blessed and a happy week.