Blog 3 - Water, sanitation and menstruation.

When I tell Jacob that we often complain or sigh when it rains in Sweden he laughs. What do you mean? Rain a nuisance? This is when I start to understand how important water is in some places. I love to learn new things. I like coming close and closer to other worlds and different life styles. At times you can find clues to why traditions and practices are the way they are. Some you need to experience to understand. In this third blog about my work in Kenya, I will write mostly about the water shortage, but also about topics that aren’t sexy - menstruation and sanitation - but it is what is; part of our lives, every ones, rich and poor.

The girl is eight or perhaps nine years old. She is a thin, but not in an unhealthy way. She just doesn’t look strong, like many children. The sun has just risen and it is calm in that special morning way. Like even a day needs to wake up slowly after a long nights sleep of darkness. I meet the girl and her mother and some other women and children as they start walking down a hill. Each is carrying a yellow plastic bucket with a lid commonly called a Jerry can. I ask if I can join. I get a smile and a nod as an answer and off we go. The children are laughing in a flirty kind of way. I start talking to the women. The skinny girl I spotted first is the bravest, she is walking close beside me.

After about 10 minutes I see some colorfully dressed women in a waiting pose. The area where they are sitting and standing look like a dry riverbed, there is only sand. In between I notice a pit, it’s about one and half meter deep. As we approach closer I see another small girl with a beautiful happy smile sitting inside. Some people shine. She is busy using a pink plastic jug. The little water she gathers trickles from the ground. It doesn’t look like much, only a couple of liters at most. But every time she fills the jar some more ooze up. At least sand is a good filter I think to myself, this water should be pretty clean. But help…there is hardly any.

I have worked with sanitation for many years. I have visited many marginalized areas and towns in Africa and in Asia. But it is only now I fully understand what water scarcity means. I am disturbed. The same way I was the first time I entered a slum. Or how I felt after I came back from a two-week work-visit in Haiti during the aftermaths of the earthquake. Or like the time I was driven for hours from Goma in Kongo to Kigali in Rwanda, with a driver who told me one true story after another about child soldiers, rape, poverty and war. It can be an overwhelming feeling, to understand something in depth. It often makes me cry.

It is a well-known and established fact that human beings need 20 liters to survive per person and day. That is exactly the same amount that enters the Jerry cans the women and children are carrying daily. The lack of fresh water is a huge problem globally. Billions are suffering. And even if 70 % of the earth is covered by water only 2,5 % is fresh. Where clean surface water is scarce, water is being extracted from deep within the earth. It happens in cities like LA and Beijing. But it is important to remember that the earths ground water is limited, just the same way oil is. On top of climate change: I have read and heard that the scarcity of fresh water might be a reason for wars in not far future.

And it is this threat of water crises that make our sanitation system out dated and problematic. Sanitation shouldn’t be connected to water but instead be handled like a waste. Like a friend of mine from India said as he arrived to Europe and the rich world for the first time: “Are you seriously flushing away your faeces with clean and drinkable water!?

But in this remote and dry area in Kenya there are no wells or toilets. The little girl who walked with me is lucky; her homestead is close to the river. The little water we collected was the result of a good rainy season that just ended. I later learn that some years it doesn’t rain at all and I wonder how they survive. I am also told that most periods of the year women and girls walk from 5 to 20 kilometers daily to gather water. For the persons living the furthest from the river that means at least two hours with an empty Jerry can and two hours back with a full one.

To balance the weight and make it easier to carry, the Jerry can is connected with a ribbon, which is wrapped around the front or top of the head. This morning my new little girl friend is relieved from her morning duty. I couldn’t watch a child that cant weigh more than 40 kg lift 20 kg. The same amount her mother and the other women carry. While walking back up the hill I finally grasp in depth what true water shortage means. The heavy water we are all carrying - I need to switch from left to right hand and back and forth- is not only for drinking and cooking, it is used for all. So not only is there a lack of clean water but a lack of water altogether. Water to wash everything with, cloths, utensils, themselves and everything else.

And it is this “everything else” that I work with. To not have water is a huge problem for women while menstruating. There are some people who work with aid who promote simple cloths saying they work fine, but they have to be taken care of properly. Others provide reusable pads that don’t require much behavior change. But neither of these solutions would work here; there just isn’t water enough for cleaning. And people in this area are as poor as it gets. Not only don’t women have enough money to buy any or the amount of sanitary pads needed for hygienic usage; they also lack underwear. So how do women wear pads or cloths without panties?

And it is now that I understand. When I finally and fully comprehend what I have read several times. What large international organization mean when they write: “underprivileged girls who don’t have money to buy pads end up using cloth, socks, skin, leaves or”… etc. But it is not skin “and” leaves. It is skin “with” leaves. I am sitting with an example in front of me. I wouldn’t call it underwear, rather a holder. It is a simple, handmade and stiff. The rectangular-irregularly-shaped-piece of skin is about 1 mm thick and approximately 4 cm wide and 15 cm long. It has a slightly sharp edge. In each of the four corners there is a hole where strings are attached. They are used for tying the panty holder around the hips. The strings are of different worn out color.

It is one of my new trainers, a young Maasai woman, who brought it to me. She explains that this is what woman and girls are wearing while menstruating in the area. The skin-panty holds leaves that are picked from trees around. Not a couple but many, one on top of the other, together, like a thick heap. The leaves she shows me are kind of soft, long rather than wide, but I still wonder, how does it work? The leaves have no absorbing feeling. What happens when you have a heavy flow? Or even a medium one?

Jacob brings me back to the topic of sanitation. I ask him why there are no toilets in the area when there is space and it is easy to dig a pit. Why do people choose to walk far to find privacy and hide behind a bush or under a tree while defecating? Especially in a place like this, where there are lions, leopards and elephants close by. There must be a logic reason behind. And of course there is and it is simple; smell.

I always say that human faeces are so disgusting to alert us that it is dangerous. Neither cow dung nor dog shit is as disgusting. Human faeces are the worst. And I believe there is a logic reason, it is to warn us; our faeces can kill us. Anyone who has worked with sanitation knows that one of the biggest challenges is not to build a toilet per se, but to make sure shared toilets stay clean. Or simply and bluntly put; nobody is interested in cleaning “the shit” after someone else. But nature has its own garbage collector, at least in this area; the hyena. Aha, that is how it works, they use leaves for wiping and the hyena’s eats the waste daily. Of course, I smile; it all makes sense.

I also learn that girls who grow up in this area are not informed about menstruation ahead of their menarche. This actually happens in many parts of the world. The reason is usually taboo. It means that when a girl sees blood in her panties the first time it comes as total surprise. It must be a shocking experience. Just imagine. Blood is usually a sign of something being wrong, a reason for pain or a symptom of being ill. They must be so afraid.

Our new project, which is being launched soon in this vulnerable area called Ilmitiok in northern Kenya is designed to support girls holistically. Girls, and boys, will be 100 % informed about puberty and sexual education, human rights and more. We will also challenge taboos and stigma by targeting Elders and the full community. We call our project Olapa Project.

Olapa means moon in the Samburu language, the symbol of menstruation. The entrance point of the project will be exactly menstruation and the free distribution of menstrual cups to all women and girls in the area. A solution that not only can be reused for 10 years saving a lot of money, but also is an optimal solution for water scarce areas as it hardly requires any water while using. Never have I felt so determined and positive about a new project and its potential for changing lives, not in one or two ways, but in many and in true depth.