Mattress Scraps as Sanitary Pads: A Harsh Reality

For numerous young women, utilizing a sanitary towel is an ordinary aspect of life.
However, for a 13-year-old girl from Marsabit county, going by the pseudonym Somoe Abdullahi, it remains an unattainable luxury.
Lacking the funds for sanitary products, Somoe resorts to cutting up an old blanket to use during her menstrual cycle. Although this temporary fix manages the bleeding, it hardly alleviates her worries.
Each month, she is haunted by the possibility of soiling her school attire.
“If my cycle coincides with school days, I just stay home,” she explains. “I want to avoid humiliating myself.”
Her dread is rooted in a past incident. After accidentally staining her skirt at school, she faced endless mockery from her peers. Consequently, she opts to skip classes while menstruating.
Somoe feels somewhat lucky compared to some of her friends, who resort to tearing apart old mattresses to use as sanitary pads.
Far away in Kisumu county, another girl using the alias Sally Atieno faces an identical ordeal.
Atieno, an orphan raised by her aunt, started her periods at just ten years old. Despite having minimal knowledge about menstruation, she felt too youthful and ashamed to seek assistance.
Obtaining sanitary napkins felt like an insurmountable hurdle.
Over a two-year span, Atieno would gather scraps of mattress sponge, wash them thoroughly, and insert them between two layers of underwear to serve as pads.
A peer once spotted her carrying the foam and naively inquired why she frequently brought mattress fragments to class for erasing the chalkboard.
“All I could do was smile,” Atieno remembers. “I was speechless.”
That smile concealed the humiliation of an adolescent dealing with a normal bodily function without access to essential hygiene supplies.
Women and girls who are visually impaired face even more daunting obstacles.
Angeline Akai notes that putting on a sanitary towel on her own used to be a struggle since she struggled to distinguish surfaces by touch or figure out the right alignment.
Because of this, she depended on her companions for help, thereby losing her personal privacy.
“If reproductive health initiatives were designed to be more accessible, numerous visually impaired females could handle their cycles on their own,” she remarks.
Akai believes that tailored menstrual education would lessen the reliance on those with sight and bring back a sense of dignity to visually impaired women.
For Marsabit county resident Arbe Godana, the onset of her menstruation was a total shock.
“My family never spoke to me about it,” she states.
She was in her first year of high school when she got her initial period. Baffled and ill-equipped, she was unsure of how to describe the event or request funds for sanitary supplies.
Luckily, a peer provided her with cotton balls to handle the immediate issue.
Subsequently, she spent her school shopping allowance on purchasing menstrual pads.
“I kept it a secret from my relatives because the topic never came up,” she notes.
What distressed Arbe the most, however, was observing the hardships endured by her fellow female students.
A number of them utilized mattress remnants for menstrual care. Various others confined themselves to their homes during their cycles.
In nomadic societies, where households regularly relocate to find grazing land and water, handling menstruation poses an even tougher challenge.
Arbe mentions that for numerous elder women, sanitary napkins are completely unknown. Certain individuals just let the blood pass without any barrier since they lack both menstrual items and basic hygiene knowledge.
“For them, this is completely ordinary,” she clarifies.
These shared hardships motivated Arbe to step up and make a difference.
Four years back, she established the NUTOKUMA Community-Based Organisation, translating to “We Are One.”
Via this project, Arbe has supplied over 500 young females with sanitary napkins and undergarments, allowing them to continue their education while menstruating.
She emphasizes that spreading awareness is equally crucial as handing out hygiene items.
“Society must recognize that menstruating is a natural occurrence,” she asserts.
Arbe advocates for the inclusion of males in reproductive health classes, pointing out that they frequently cause the bullying and shaming of girls who experience leaks.
She additionally urges a broader rollout of complimentary menstrual pads to girls hailing from disadvantaged families, ensuring no student loses out on education due to their period.
Medical professional Dr Victor Wanjohi explains that menstrual cleanliness is not dictated by the specific items a female chooses.
“The belief that adequate menstrual care demands particular products is false,” he states.
Even though fabric pieces can serve as a safe option, he highlights the necessity of washing and fully drying them prior to subsequent use.
Dr Wanjohi advises swapping out menstrual supplies every four to six hours and warns against over-washing or douching while on a period, as this could upset the natural bacterial flora and elevate infection risks.
He further highlights how crucial it is to be aware of one’s reproductive rhythm.
A typical menstrual phase, according to him, spans two to seven days, with the entire cycle generally falling between 21 and 35 days.
“Menstruation shouldn’t be a forbidden subject,” he notes. “Normalizing discussions about periods makes it simpler for females to find help and handle their well-being securely.”
He further cautions product makers to avoid toxic substances in sanitary items, noting that extended contact could cause allergic reactions, reproductive issues, and additional medical problems.
Kilifi County Woman Representative Getrude Mbeyu points out that overlapping initiatives by various groups handing out sanitary pads has led to inconsistent distribution.
She points out that whereas her department and the Ministry of Gender prioritize students, other organizations ought to focus on out-of-school girls to guarantee comprehensive reach.
Even with the Kenyan government’s rollout of complimentary sanitary towel schemes in state schools, deficits and financial barriers still impact numerous girls.
Reports suggest that over a million young females in Kenya lose three to four days of schooling monthly because they lack menstrual supplies.
Substandard washroom infrastructure, scarce water resources, and minimal availability of emergency menstrual care in educational institutions compound the problem.
Studies by UNESCO reveal that ten percent of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa skip classes during their periods owing to a lack of hygiene products, inadequate washrooms, social stigma, or insufficient reproductive health assistance.
For adolescents such as Somoe and Atieno, menstruating goes beyond a mere cyclical physical change. It represents an ongoing battle that dictates if they can attend classes, engage openly in society, or withdraw into embarrassment and isolation.
As long as menstrual supplies fail to be reachable, cheap, and free of stigma, countless young women will keep suffering the consequences of their cycles through forfeited chances and disrupted learning.
Even with state-led efforts, distribution flaws, social stigma, and poverty persistently compel numerous girls to skip school or resort to risky options, impacting their academic progress and self-esteem. The crisis is magnified in isolated and nomadic regions, where education and means are scarce. Even as local support and campaigns arise, lasting remedies demand better policy alignment, a steady provision of no-cost sanitary items, and comprehensive menstrual education involving both genders to eradicate stigma.