A group of university students on Saturday responded to a call for help from vulnerable girls from Kibarani slums for sanitary pads.
Led by Edgar Okisai, the students from different universities distributed sanitary pads to over 200 women and girls in the Mombasa slums in a bid to end the plight of girls who are lured into sex by men promising them pads.
“A friend told me how a boda boda guy took advantage of an ignorant girl in Mariakani and defiled her because she did not know how to handle her periods,” Okisai, a Mount Kenya University student, told the Star.
That made him realise there were many such cases in urban slums like Kibarani.
“It made me realise lack of pads can be devastating, especially for those from poor backgrounds,” he said.
In Kibarani, similar stories abound. Masha Kipenzi (not her real name) one day saw some red discharge from her private parts.
The 12-year-old could not remember hurting herself and wondered what was wrong. She has never stepped into class.
“The girl relayed this information to someone she considered her friend who had dropped out of school at Class 7. He was now riding a boda boda,” Okisai said.
Karisa (also not his real name) told Kipenzi he could ‘treat’ the problem and invited her to their house when no one was at home. He defiled her in the name of treating her.
“These are the stories we have been getting from slums such as Kibarani. That is why we came up with this drive, which we call Pad-A-Girl Initiative,” Okisai said.
Erevuka Dada CBO’s Comfort Njeri, a student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, said empowering girls will go a long way to end the early pregnancies crisis at the Coast.
“This is just a form of restoring the dignity of the girl-child. We want to tell the girls that they do not have to sell their bodies for pads,” Njeri said.
Erevuka Dada, which is based in Kilifi county, has undertaken similar drives in the vast county where such cases are rampant.
Poverty, Njeri said, is one of the major factors that push vulnerable children to do things that expose them to paedophiles and other sex pests.
“There is an economic crisis. Their parents do not have enough to buy sanitary towels, which to them is a luxury they cannot afford,” Njeri said.
She called on parents to talk to their children about sex, a topic considered taboo in many communities.
Njeri said not many parents sit their children down and have a conversation with them about sex.
“This makes the children gullible because some things that happen to them are new to them and they do not know how to handle them. So they end up being vulnerable to sex pests,” she said.
Okisai said will donate pads in slum areas in Mombasa every end of the month.
The slums targeted are Burukenge, Moroto, Bandarini, Kaa Chonjo and Junda, among others.