East Africa Day 57 (Sat July 9): Tour of Kampala Houses of Worship Part 2 & AFRIpads

I woke up this AM to find that the electricity was still out. I caught up with my journal, and then caught up with Sophia by phone. We made plans to meet at Nakumaatt at 1pm for lunch. I then headed to the city center again on a matatu. The matatu let me out near the Gadaffi (SPELLING????) National Mosque. I had brought clothing to cover my head and pants, and was able to enter the mosque for a few minutes. I don’t know the last time I was in a mosque. It was really interesting. I walked around the grounds for a few minutes – it was very quiet. Then left and hopped on a boda headed to Nakumatt.

I found Sophia at a different coffee shop, where I got to meet AFRIpads’ new hire, Helen who had arrived in Uganda about two weeks ago to handle Sales. Sophia’s partner Pauls was there, too – working on a presentation in preparation for their upcoming trip to Nairobi.



Sophia and I had vegetarian sandwiches and talked about how we both wound up in East Africa, what we are doing, and generally just had a really nice time talking. I have been a fan of AFRIpads since November 2009 when I discovered the venture while researching for another blog post. So it was SO EXCITING to get to meet Sophia, and to hear her story. She is even more amazing than I thought – I was so impressed.
In sum, she’s from Connecticut and went to McGill in Canada. While at McGill studying environmental issues, she spent six months in East Africa with a McGill program. She spent a little bit of that time in Uganda. After college she and Pauls traveled a lot, and then decided to spend a year in Uganda. Through a childhood friend of Pauls', they found a volunteer placement in Masaka, the community AFRIpads currently operates in. Towards the end of the six months, they met another McGill alum who was about to leave Uganda. The woman gave Sophia and Pauls twelve reusable menstrual pads, to distribute to the girls in their community. They started to see the impact that this product was having on the community, and decided to spend their next six months in Uganda developing AFRIpads!

I learned a lot about their business plan, aspirations for AFRIpads, and the challenges that they’ve faced and the ways that they’ve innovated their ways past those challenges. In addition I learned that students who have their periods during exam periods cannot take their exams, meaning that they have to repeat the grade in some cases in order to wait to take the exam again! Currently, AFRIpads seems to distribute most of their pads via NGO’s. They sell the pads in bulk to NGO’s all over Africa, who then provide the pads to African women through the orgs’ own programs. One of those NGO partners is BRAC Uganda, which has many sites all over the country. Each BRAC Uganda office has women from the community who act as door-to-door educators and saleswomen. They visit the homes in their communities and talk to their neighbors about things like AFRIpads. This is obviously a very different way of getting the product out into the marketplace. It reminds me of a video I saw within the last year or so, of D.Light working with Indians who go door-to-door selling the company’s solar lanterns. I think I read that D.Light didn’t always do their sales this way, but that this method is working very well. I’m excited that AFRIpads is following this model, too – I love watching other people innovate for purposes like this! Sophia said that our lunch was one of the first times that she had met someone in person that she had first connected with via social media. LOVE IT! I’m still so amazed that I actually got to meet her – she’s so inspiring! Who would’ve thought that I’d actually get to have lunch with her in Kampala, when I first learned about AFRIpads in November 2009:) We realized that we might be staying at the same Nairobi hotel this coming week, so maybe I’ll get to see them again this summer:)



After lunch I took a boda to the Baha’I Temple on the outskirts of Kampala. I’d heard that the grounds are beautiful, and that it’s one of four Baha’I Temples in the world. How could I miss it?!? It was in a suburban location with a lot of green, perched on the top of a hill. Very beautiful. When I arrived a few wedding parties were leaving the grounds. A caretaker allowed me to enter the Temple. It was very pretty and also beautifully constructed. I then circled the building, looking at the gardens and views.




Fortunately I ran into some other interns who are staying at the hostel, who had hired a matatu to take them to the Temple. They let me jump into the matatu with them. They were so nice, and I had a great time riding back to the hostel with them. Half of the interns are working on their Masters in Public Health in the USA. The other half are med students at Brown and U Mich, working on a HIV-related research project in partnership with the Ministry of Health. Towards the end of our trip, the driver got a little lost. Amazingly I knew where we were, and was able to direct the driver back to the hostel.

Got back to the hostel and found the electricity working, but the internet is intermittent. Caught up on the blog posts. Tomorrow is my last full day in Uganda. So sad – hasn’t set in, yet. I’m going back to Jinja to go White Water Rafting, will catch up with Charlie, Annette and Nikki at Backpackers in Jinja tomorrow night, and then Monday I head back to Nairobi.

Safety First - Period

I don't think that this topic receives enough coverage, so here you go ...

Ladies, please consider bagging the disposable menstrual products made from crude oil and rayon.

Personal Health Reasons:

Most commercial brands of menstrual products have undergone a bleaching process that utilizes the bleach chlorine dioxide. As a result, the menstrual products contain low-level dioxins, which the EPA has deemed unsafe for humans.

In animal studies, dioxins have caused nerve damage, birth defects, increased rates of miscarriages and changes to the immune system. The EPA lists dioxins as a probable carcinogen (causes cancer.)

For example, synthetic tampons that have undergone the bleaching process may contribute to endometriosis, cancer, immune system suppression, uterine fibroids, pelvic inflammatory disease, and reduced fertility.

The products are also usually made with synthetic fibers like viscous rayon. This could increase your risk of contracting TSS (toxic shock syndrome) - a bacterial illness.

Some of these products also contain fragrances that could irritate your body, or paraben preservatives which could cause cancer.

Since vaginal tissue is extremely absorptive, it's easy for chemicals and synthetic fragrances to be absorbed into your body.

Here are some additional details --




Environmental Reasons:

Plastic tampon applicators, and all of the plastic packaging that comes along with your maxi pads, winds up in landfills and the oceans.

Earlier this year, a Canadian city's sewage treatment plant became badly backed up, and had to be shut down. Cit officials had to remove several of the plant's filters because they were clogged up with a large number of plastic tampon applicators that women had flushed down the city's toilets. As a result of the plant's problems, the tampon applicators are washing up along the Atlantic Coast.

Resident Cindy Schultz reported this about her local Point Pleasant Park: "I'm here twice a day with my dogs and you cannot walk two feet on the beach without seeing at least a dozen [plastic tampon applicators] at your feet. And it's disgusting."

Every year, women dispose of billions of plastic laden pads and liners. Most of these pads are made from over 90% crude oil plastic! YIKES. It can't be good for that stuff to be so close to your body, either.


So What To Do About It?

Try disposable products made from organic cotton. The ones most stores seem to carry are Natracare's chlorine, dye and fragrance-free disposable (and biodegradable) tampons and pads, which are made from 100% certified organic cotton. I think I've even seen these at Trader Joe's.

You could also check out GladRag's reusable cloth pads. I stumbled upon the company's booth at the 2008 Green Festival; they have an extensive and reasonably priced product line. Competitors are Party In My Pants and Lunapads.

The environmental news website Grist did maxi pad product reviews and comparisons here, and tampons and menstrual cups, here.

Then of course there's always Do It Yourself options!







While we are on the subject of menstruation, check this out.

According to UNICEF, 10% of school-age African girls miss school because of a lack of access to affordable sanitary products.

In Rwanda, it’s much worse. According to on-the-ground research by Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), half the girls are missing school due to menstruation and the main reason given is that sanitary pads are too expensive.

For women, 24% miss work - up to 45 days per year - for the same reason.

This not only limits girls’ educational and women’s professional achievement, but leads to a significant economic loss for nations. SHE estimates that a lack of affordable sanitary pads reduces GDP by $115 million per year in Rwanda alone.

To learn more about this problem, check out this March 2008 story "When a Period ends more than a Sentence."

I first became aware of this problem in 2007 when Procter & Gamble aired this commercial.



At the time, I thought this campaign was great. But today, I found a few that are even better! (And in line with the health and environmental messages I relayed above.)

Check this out!



To learn more about this nonprofit, check out their website. Specifically, check out this blog post that talks about the nonprofit's work with the company Lunapads.

You can follow imagine1day on Facebook here or on Twitter here.


Also check out this amazing nonprofit Afri-Pads that empowers girls in Uganda by providing them with reusable fabric menstrual pads. It was founded by three Millennials who are alums of McGill University. They work with young tailors in Uganda.


photo: Afri-Pads tailors at work!

It looks like this nonprofit was conceptualized by Carrie-Jane Williams, the team member based outside of Uganda, when she was doing a placement abroad as part of her masters program. This is taken from her (now outdated) blog, in a post she wrote before she left for Uganda in September 2008:

The purpose of my trip to Uganda is two-fold.

The main reason I’m going is to do a volunteer teaching placement. I’ll be in a rural village in the Masaka District. Sans electricity. Sans running water. It’s definitely going to be an adventure!! Although the main language of the district is Luganda (Lu = language, so Ganda language), English is still the language of instruction, even now in postcolonial times. I’ll be teaching high school girls and likely will have some time in the primary school as well.

When I found out that the Language and Literacy Department at UBC (and a bunch of profs in the dept.) were strongly linked to the community, its schools, and its library through previous research, I decided to hop on the research train myself. My master’s research will be on digital literacies in rural libraries, specifically focusing on the e-granary, which contains upwards of 10 000 000 texts! (Much more info to come!)

A side project that I’ll be working on with Dr. Shelley Jones and Mr. Dan Ahimbisibwe involves tackling the issue of menstruation as a barrier to girls’ education in rural Africa. Because of a lack of access to effective hygiene products and sanitation facilities, girls in Uganda miss up to a week of school per month while they’re on their periods!! We’re hoping to introduce reusable cloth pads to the girls and a wonderful Vancouver based company called Lunapads will be helping us out. Stay tuned for more information – it’ll be exciting!!

The organization is managed in Uganda by the other 2 members of the nonprofit, the young couple Pauls Grinvalds and Sonia Klumpp. You can read more about them and how they got their start in Uganda here.

Here are two reports on how things were going - the first one is very early on, and the second is more recent.

You can follow Afri-Pads on Facebook, here.