Hi Elisabeth

It’s nice to hear from you. We all wish you were still with us but if wishes were horses, the English say, the beggars might ride. Anyway, we look forward to reading more words of wisdom from you and preferably, often.

This is a very difficult subject (for some of us) but the story is still the same everywhere in the third world. Please note that the current issue of the Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene i.e. the Sept-Oct 2012 edition reports on ‘Developing an Affordable Sanitary Pad’

If am allowed to quote from the article verbatim ‘research conducted in Uganda indicates that about 90 percent of urban poor women and girls cannot afford off –the-shelf sanitary pads and instead improvise with materials such as grass, leaves, old newspapers, and pieces of cloth’. This is shocking enough.

But the other day one of our readers remarked that ‘for an urban woman how on earth does she have to use grass and leaves? For a lady in a rural setting, probably. Are the facts hypothetical or is the story illusory? He commented.

I have yet to find the answer.

Regards

Mwaniki

Dear Colleagues

My attention has been drawn by this story of a 12 year old girl who narrates the sanitation condition in her Masindi School,Uganda.It had only 18 views and zero replies before my visit.

Whilst I would recommend everyone to read the story,I wish to remind this platform that millions of schoolgirls in Africa suffer from the consequences for lack of improved sanitation and hundreds of thousands end school due to this shocking situation.Needless to say,millions of deaths every year mostly children under five are attributed to lack of access to improved sanitation worldwide.

While all roads lead to Durban,South Africa for the 12th World Toilet Summit scheduled in early Dec.,2012, we the publishers of Africa Water,Sanitation & Hygiene wish to put forward a proposal.Before this forum proceeds to the Summit,lets fix the toilets for the Masindi Girls School.

We are offering a full page colour advertising space worth US$ 5,662 to the corporate partners of the SuSanA network to advertise their products and/or services in our Nov-Dec 2012 edition of the Africa Water,Sanitation & Hygiene and the proceeds will go to the building a new ablution block in the school to be ready before the Durban Summit.The exercise will be conducted in an accountable and transparent manner and accounts will be declared.

Is anyone out there to take the offer?

Regards

S.Mwaniki
Publisher

In the New Vision news paper Wed,Oct,3,2012., a young girl from Masindi Town Model Primary School narrates the ordeal girls of this are going through. I quote "The girls' toilet is divided into two. One part is for teachers and another one for girls. Whenever we are in our menstruation period, we have nowhere to bathe or change our pads. This forces us to stay at home until our period stops."


When I read this I was so touched, first i thought of the numbers of girls in that school to be using only one room, teachers using one of the room can be both male and female so i even thought how the partitioning of the toilet was done. In summary the girls in this school are exposed to danger.

They actually need immediate help. Readers go for the school rescue