My Menstruation - My Period

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The day my first period came, we had been invited – or probably invited ourselves – to my uncle's house in Westlands. 

I knew about periods.  I'd learned about them in school when I was ten, in standard six during science.  The content of the subject that year was the seven systems of the body –I think they have become cleverer now and identified more systems.  One of the seven chapters was entitled, “The Reproductive System”.  It was the most exiting of the seven topics.  Diagrams of vaginas, breasts, penises and scrotal sacs.  Exciting stuffses for a ten year old in a convent school.  Which reminds me that I have heard, and have personal proof of something about convent girls going wild after they leave school, after years of suppressed politeness, decorum and discipline – a story for anaa day .  We bought the books early during the December holidays because my mother was and still is organised and has never believed in last minute rush for anything let alone buying text books the day before school – so the school book lists were calculated with actual prices from the bookshop by madams, and the exact money received from my exacting and accountant father and books purchased early.  Flipping the pages through of the science text book during the long holidays, hidden away from my younger siblings for they were too young to know these things, my ferally wild enthusiasm was held in abeyance, alongside delicious anticipation, of participating in more than the usual opening day conversations. 

Before the onset of my period in standard seven, my mother who was and still remains a teacher, and had probably taught the class six science syllabus, had already given me “the talk”, when time and observation told her I was on the onset of puberty for my breasts had started sprouting.  Uncomfortable process – hard painful knobs.  “Matiti dodo” as I think they were described in Wasifu Binti Saad by Shaban bin Robert – compulsory reading in standard seven at eleven years old.  Matiti dodo was a nickname I carried for a couple of months of that year, alongside “jelly bums” – which I still have to this day, though the dodos died due to age and suckling the gnawingly hungry lil’uns.  Meanwhile, if there is any English translation for the above book, I’d love to read it.  I have no idea what eleven year olds were doing reading that book, for sure the musamwati [Kiswahili - vocabulary] was horrendously hard, and the story laborious to read and understand.  But we had a progressive “kali” [fierce] Kiswahili teacher, Bi’Ma whose word was not the law, but above it, so we read the book.  How could you not, when your first meeting of her at ten years of age in standard five – was when she walked into class, beautifully dressed, coiffured and made up, calmly set out her class rules and gave the consequences deadpanned – that if you upset her she would hold you down, open your mouth, grasp one tooth, throw it through the window, over two terraces [one the width of a volley ball pitch, the next the length of the tennis courts plus the stream with the bamboo thicket] and onto the busy highway, then pull the next tooth, hurl through the window onto the highway, pull the next, hurl through the window, until you had to more teeth and you would forever be a “kibogoyo” [toothless person].  Above the law.  Fierce.  This is the teacher who took you for physical education lesson [PE] and put you through your paces, still in well dressed in high high high stilettos when the assigned teacher was absent.  Fierce.  Who, if you spotted in the corridor, as you came up the stairs, you turned around and fled to use the stairs at the other end.  Fierce.  Who, if you were in trouble with her, you took yourself to the Head Mistress to report yourself.  Fierce.  She laughs uproariously now whenever you reminisce with her and tell her how you feared her.  Amazing woman.   Great teacher. 

Back to my menses.  One Saturday morning, while in standard seven, at twelve years of age, I woke up, and there was a red smear on the tissue when I went to pee.  I either called my mother to the toilet or went to her room.  A pad was offered, and I was shown how to use it.  In later years, the pads were not always available, and cotton wool and tissue I found worked, though problematically.  It’s about having tight knickers and moving strategically – hard for a rambunctious athletic twelve year old, and the cardy around the waist [a grievous crime in my school] as one shimmied to the loo to wash the back of the uniform was something that would result.   They – the tissues and cotton wool – still have had to work for me on recent emergency occasions too.

We went to my uncle’s house.  They had a big fallen down tree in their compound. Me - Wanja Kȋihȋ, tom boy in my mother tongue, was up the tree in a flash.  My mother sitting in the garden with my aunt saw me, monkey-swinging up in the branches.  She called me.  Her question was – how?   Her commentary – I am now a woman, climbing trees and swinging off branches was not appropriate.  My aunt, bless her heart, put forth the opinion, that womanhood does not happen in a day, and I was free to continue playing.

My mother did not make sense.  I was in an all girls convent school.  I had classmates who had started their periods years before in standard four.  Periods were normal.  Though there were times when periods were an issue.  Sometimes by choice, when escaping unstudied for tests – you developed severe cramps and went to lie down in the sick bay and sometimes we would be more than the single bed could hold, so we sat on the floor.  Again by choice to avoid swimming – either on freezingly cold day in the unheated pool, or for those who hated swimming all together and had a readymade excuse for once or more a month, which you could get away with depending on the presence of mind of the swimming coach – one coach would mark “P” on the register, so you had to know when your last fictional period was and track alongside your real one.  Or by accident when the period came on the same day as the swimming lesson, and tampons were still scary or unavailable. 

All other aspects remained the same during my period or outside of it.  During our periods, we all ran, swam, went for the PE lesson, played marbles, three sticks, blaada, shake, king, rounders, netball, kaati, volleyball, tennis, squash – whatever was in season.  Periods were just a normal part of being girls and did not really stop us from being young and active girls.  My mother, who'd taught me how to do cartwheels, back flips, summersaults and walk on my hands, because she also taught PE now had a problem with me climbing a fallen down tree because of blood coming from my vagina?  Please.  Wasn't going to work.  Not in my head anyway.  And my actions.

At some point, my periods became a clotted dark mess. Alaaaaarm.  Called my mother.  She fixed that with a cup of hot cocoa - the orange original bitter stuff – with extra sugar, and normal flow was restored.  I read somewhere that chocolate, cocoa, does have an effect on the woman’s menstrual cycle.  I believe it.  Because to this day, when I get the muchies a couple of days before my periods, I gobble up a whole bar of dark chocolate – preferences are, rum, nuts and fruit, and then I am good, no more cravings.  Otherwise I will eat me out of carbo house and home. 

Youth is good.  I had cycles of thirty to thirty-two days.  Eleven periods a year.  Quite manageable really.  Sore breasts, stomach churning, vomit inducing, gas building, burp producing, fart forming, abdomen screaming, back aching, anus paining, calf spasming mess.  I remember lying miserable on the cold cement in the school washrooms, after the school passed a “no paracetamol, only glucose for periods” policy.  Who does that?  In a school run by women?  Surely?  Solution – carry your own pain killers or call the parents to pick you up and sort you out.  My father came. Poor man.  What's wrong.  I’m on my periods.  My mother tells me he asked her – what's all this about, please sort it out. 

Meanwhile, I went to school with paracetamol in my pencil case, and a backup stash kept in my locker.  At some point I would take more than twelve tablets over the first twelve hours – which have always been the hardest – and still be uncomfortable.  I would take the tablets, hug the hot water bottle, go to sleep and wake up drenched in sweat, and still cramping.  Take more tables and back into fitful sleep and wake up sweat soaked again.  That has never changed – I still have full body wet film of sweat sleep on the first day of my period. 

Then things became worse.  Or is it I started paying more attention.  Three to four days before my periods, I’d become a maniacal raging something.  Silent, moody, grumpy, and festering angry.   Eating everything in sight but for the chocolate.  Asprrin.  Brufen.  Diclamol. Ponstan. Have all been drugs I have used.

My cycle has an impact on my life.  Monthly.  Depending on what day I am on my cycle.  It impacts my relationships and even how I work.  I have learned to work within it.  Since it is part of me, and lives in me, with me.  With time, experience, self awareness and apps that track my cycle, coupled with a flexible work process, I have learned to favour myself and I am able to usually schedule days off.  I retreat, give myself bed days and nurture me – on the day of ovulation, and the day before and start day of my flow.  I have been accused of being selfish – by a male who has no clue, or females who have it easy.  I agree – what are they going to do about it.

Yes ovulation is also an issue for me.  One ovary is evil – she’s the baby spawn of anguish, the other ovary we can negotiate terms.  The evil ovary’s production operations kicks off with sharp side pains running downwards to my gluteus maximus, making sitting difficult, lasting for a number of hours.  Every second month, ovulation is a terror, prepping for an explosive show.  So apart from a monthly cycle, I have a bad period and a wosser period alternatively.

At some point, they told me, you give birth and the horridness will go.  Well, I have my children, thanks be to modern medicine, because my cervix said you gotstobejocking and locked down shut.  Not even for the children would it change its disposition.  Google tells me that, “the cramping sensation is intensified when clots or pieces of bloody tissue from the lining of the uterus pass through the cervix, especially if a woman's cervical canal is narrow”.  So maybe giving birth vaginally does help, by widening the canal, but that help never found me.

Because I track my periods, I can tell that when my mood soars and sours.  I can tell that there is nothing wrong with the person I am engaging right now, talking to right now, and it is just my period announcing its arrival, days in advance.  Recently I picked up my pieces of materials from a designer friend after she told me the total cost of my proposed outfits.  So aware of who I am, that I told her – “this, this, what I am doing is premenstrual something,  I could have had a conversation about the cost with you, but right now, I cannot be bothered”. 

Time and age has changed my cycle from the thirty-two day cycle to twenty-two to twenty-four day cycles.  Fifteen periods a year – four more than I earlier had, four more times of crap.  Who needs that crap I ask the gods of female fertility.  Oh yee deorum menstrualis – is this fair?   My prayer right now, is for a free pass for my menopause and a PMS free period for my daughters – I have paid the price.  I've suffered enough. Please – oh yee menstruam gods!

I am not the first female to suffer periods.  I had a friend who would literally crawl to the clinic every month for an injection for years, until someone told her that she should start the injections a few days before and it would help.  Why did no one tell us this before?  We are 7 billion humans on the planet, half are female.  Why has not one female produced a “what you can expect during your periods”, that covers all this and more?  Because I know my experience is not exhaustive.  Recently I joined a FaceBook page on premenstrual syndrome, and I realise I do not have it near bad as some.  There are those who suffer much much more – two weeks or more of being unfunctional, being immobile.  People who cannot leave the house because their flow is uncontainably heavy.  Some who surrender and sit for hours on the toilet, or use adult diapers just to be able to hold the flow and have some freedom of movement.

Then no mother and teacher one tells you everything.  It should be included in the talk.  Really it should.  Plus the variances even within one human female body over time.  Generally on average, every five years it is different.  New symptoms – added, not reduced, just added onto the current ones.  Pre-menstrual syndrome.  In-menstrual syndrome.  Post-menstrual syndrome.  All-menstrual situation.  My menstruation.