How Janet Mbugua became a menstrual hygiene champion
Janet Mbugua, founder Inua Dada Foundation Trust. Her book gives a voice to girls and women who lack access to menstrual care, and advocates their dignity
What you need to know:
- Many of the girls the former news anchor spoke with were from low-income families and had difficulties acquiring menstrual hygiene products.
- Faced with the dilemma of whether to buy food or sanitary towels for their daughters, parents easily chose the former.
- Janet's book, therefore, provides a voice for girls and women who lack access to menstrual care, advocates their dignity.
My First Time is a profoundly refreshing educational manual with comforting information and a wealth of pictorial features about women's first menstrual experiences.
It has 50 accounts from public figures, compiled by Janet Mbugua, a former news anchor. They illuminate the pivotal topic of menstrual health through meticulous recollections of unique personal challenges.
The book provides a voice for girls and women who lack access to menstrual care, advocating their dignity and compassionately exposing the calamitous pain of period poverty as a testament to societal inequalities.
It outlines the effects of periods and offers numerous examples on how women cope with related discomfort, including period cramps, shattering pain, migraines, mood swings, excessive blood flow and the excruciating feelings of needles injected during some of the most distressing menstrual accounts, including endometriosis.
For 10 years throughout her adolescence, Janet endured debilitating pain and heavy menstrual flow from ovarian cysts. At 21, she underwent a surgical process called laparoscopy, to determine her condition, before her gynaecologist neutralised the complication.
Janet's experience inspired her to fight the silent shame, stigma and embarrassment due to menstruation. In conservatively patriarchal Kenyan society, taboo on the subject primitively discourages public discussions.
Janet was raised by a compassionate father, John Mbugua. He despised intolerance for menstrual discussions by men who considered themselves educated; men who adopted the trappings of modernity but shunned the transformative power of discussing the menstrual cycle's significance in reproduction.
For many women, periods come with fear, trauma and joy. While at the apex of journalism at the Kenya Television Network and, later, Royal Media Services, Janet's interactions opened an exceptional opportunity to converse with countless girls. Evidently, this proved that the largest disruptions in their lives were their monthlies.
Many of the girls she spoke with were from low-income families and had difficulties acquiring menstrual hygiene products. Faced with the dilemma of whether to buy food or sanitary towels for their daughters, parents easily chose the former.
The cover of Janet Mbugua's book, My First Time.
The national government only caters for sanitary pads for schoolgirls, but even this has been mired in confusion due to delays, despite the suffering by those from underprivileged families who are in dire need to stop the frequent interruptions that menses causes on their academic journey.
Menstrual supplies include tampons, pads, re-washable pads, menstrual cups, birth control pills and hormonal pills. The pills effectively regulate monthly periods and help women cope with a host of menstrual effects. Budgetary allocations would protect dignity, and eliminate the unhygienic improvisations some girls use.
The use of rags, cow hide, old mattresses, leaves, ash and old shopping bags only result in infections, including Chlamydia, Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), Tetanus and Vaginal Yeast Infection.
Having fewer women in leadership positions in Kenya has partly slowed down the elimination of period poverty. Fixing the power imbalance would anchor intermediate and advanced solutions by fast-tracking the awareness of menstrual health management needs of women.
It would also expedite the implementation of school distribution phases, programme design and financial management, thus ensuring menstrual products reach the most informal and impoverished areas.
Politically, male dominance in decision-making stifles menstrual management efforts considering the patriarchal influence that silences discussions from ethnic and religious angles.
Even though periods make women feel feminine and self-conscious, the discomfort bars them from performing tasks to their maximum potential. In the absence of sanitary pads, they become less physically active.
Men should take part in ending menstrual stigma through open discussions. Silence consistently perpetuates period shame, but discussing conditions openly is psychologically beneficial.
Normalising periods creates a better understanding of its significance. Therefore, menstrual health lessons, together with sex education or health classes, as they are known in the United States, should be included in the curriculum.
Relevant laws should also be formulated.
Basic infrastructure, including running water, modern disposal equipment and better medication to reduce the discomfort of the process, should further be deployed. As Janet's father puts it, the menstrual cycle is normal, natural, necessary and important.
The reviewer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and the founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre; @jeffbigbrother
