A chat with Mary Consolata Namagambe, a UN Human Rights Fellow of African Descent |30 January 2020
Ms Namagambe
‘Seychelles was indeed the perfect place to come to relax my soul’
The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Fellow for People of African Descent, Mary Consolata Namagambe, recently took a break from her usually busy schedule to vacation in Seychelles. During her paradise vacation, Ms Namagambe swam in the tranquil Seychelles waters, read her favourite books on the beach, drank the water straight out of coconuts and had a relaxing time away from her daily routines. The founder of ‘She for She’, a company that produces reusable sanitary pads to empower women and girls in Uganda and other African countries, noted that Seychelles should be on everyone’s bucket list.
Seychelles NATION recently engaged with the human rights activist to find out more about her work and what brought her to the Seychelles.
Who is Mary C. Namagambe?
Mary Consolata Namagambe is a Ugandan-Danish woman that has been working towards bridging the period poverty gap for women and girls in Uganda, and then later in other countries on the African continent. Through her Ugandan-based social enterprise ‘She for She’ – which is solely ran and operated by Ugandan women – Ms Namagambe aims to end the fact that menstruation prohibits girls in certain communities in Africa from going to school.
Above all else, Ms Namagambe considers herself to be an “unapologetic feminist” and has been striving to empower girls to take control of their menstrual health and education, rather than yielding to discriminatory societal pressure.
Many girls are unable to attend school due to their menstrual cycles and a lack of personal hygiene products often leads to bullying and stigmatisation of girls and women.
Aside from Uganda, ‘She for She’ has been able to reach girls in countries such as Tanzania, Kenya, Senegal and Gambia.
Why reusable pads?
“Providing an affordable and safe menstruation product is important due to the lack of access to appropriate health care information and products in Uganda right now, which leads to young girls dropping out of school, or making them use unsanitary and sometimes dangerous substitutes for menstrual products,” Ms Namagambe explained.
“Our choice to make reusable menstrual pads is based on a need for environmentally-friendly and economically-sustainable solutions, that not only empowers young girls by giving them the tools they need to stay in school and the confidence to fight the taboo against menstruation, but is also a dependable product, that will last without the environmental damage of a store bought, one-use pad.”
‘She for She’
“Currently, all of our reusable pads are produced by Ugandan women employed by ‘She for She’. The local women are trained by ‘She for She’ and in all the necessary skills needed to create the pads. With the local production of pads we will be able to create and offer jobs to the women the organisation focuses on, and as such, empower not only the users of the pads but the local female population as a whole.
In addition to offering reusable pads, ‘She for She’ also works directly with students, and teaches schoolgirls and boys about menstruation and menstrual hygiene management with sustainable options.
The ultimate goals are to help the students to understand their bodies, menstrual hygiene and menstruation, and help break existing taboos and misconceptions surrounding what is a natural bodily function.
“When I was in Northern Uganda, I interviewed boys and men asking them what they knew about menstruation,” Ms Namagambe recounted.
“One of the boys I interviewed grew up with five sisters, and would always get mad and frustrated every month when his mother would bring ‘presents’ to his sisters that they would hide from him and not share. When he turned 21, he at last discovered menstruation as he became a father by that age and found out that all this time his sisters were hiding pads, not presents.”
“I dream of a world where female reproductive health and menstruation, is acknowledged for the power which it carries. The power that lets our civilisations foster anew. Menstruation is so dear a target point for all of us if we are to secure female equality and it is a focal point to assure that everyone has the better terms to attend and finish an education.”
But what does a pad really mean to a girl?
- For Grace Nabushawo, a student, access to sanitary menstruation products would have allowed her to sit her exams at the same time as her classmates did. However she failed part of her 2018 Junior Secondary School exams as some of the papers were assessed during her menstrual cycle. With her parents unable to afford to buy her a pack of sanitary pads, Grace had to rewrite the exams she missed the following year.
- “I used to use cloths that I would cut from my old T-shirts to keep the blood from staining my dresses, but they were not enough and blood would still stain my clothes,” said Joan Anyango, a 16-year-old student in Ayito primary school in Lira, Uganda. “Boys used to laugh at me and I eventually simply stayed home whenever my periods started.”
- “I felt embarrassed to be a girl and felt like it was a punishment,” recalled 13-year-old Faith, describing her first period. She was living in a boarding school in Narok County, Kenya, when it happened. A friend taught her to use a cloth to manage the blood. “I was not knowledgeable about how and why it happens, and what to expect. So, naturally, I was scared and confused.”
- When Michelle got her first period, she was afraid she was dying. Terrified, she stuffed bits of cloth and cotton inside herself to try to stop the bleeding. Too frightened to tell her parents what was happening, she kept quiet. She spent her school day terrified blood would leak out, exposing her to ridicule from her classmates. “At first I was so scared, I didn’t know what it was, I thought I had hurt myself.”
So although a pad may seem like a small, trivial thing that everyone should be able to afford, it is not. We should never underestimate the power of having access to pads and how that can change a girl’s life.
How did Mary C. ended up in Seychelles?
“Let me take you back some 7 months ago,” Ms Namagambe started.
“I was in Denmark sitting at a restaurant with my best friend Tine Billekop Reinert. She slowly takes out a letter from her bag and hands it to me. I’m a bit confused, in that moment, why would she give me a letter, when we can talk about anything.”
“I open the letter and there are pictures of beautiful beaches and I look at her still not understanding, and she yells ‘you are going to Seychelles’. I begin to cry; she hugs me and tells me that she is so proud of me.
“That year I had graduated my masters in law, I had turned 30 years and ‘She for She’ was moving in the right direction and because I never seem to give myself a break, this trip was for me to relax, look back and see how far I had come,” Ms Namagambe said.
When I entered my hotel room this note was waiting for me: “Congratulations on all your accomplishments and living life to the fullest my baby! This is a celebration of you and all the opportunities and new paths that keep coming in abundance on your soul and life journey. Jeg elsker dig (I love you)” Tine Billekop Reinert.
“In the end, Seychelles was indeed the perfect place to come to relax my soul, taking long walks in the beautiful nature, waking up to the Indian Ocean every day, being reminded of how big the world is and how many opportunities await me. I’m thankful to the kind people of Seychelles sending me smiles that have touched my soul.”
‘African children may learn about heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the heroes of today.’
Mary Consolata Namagambe, Master in Law (LL.M.) – University of Southern Denmark, SDU, Tel: +4522396362 www.maryconsolatanamagambe.com
The accompanying photos show some highlights of Ms Namagambe’s trip to Seychelles and of her ‘She for She’ project.
