The invisible struggles of being a Kenyan girl

The invisible struggles of being a Kenyan girl 

In Kenya, menstruation is still something many girls have to plan their lives around in ways that feel unfair.

In urban areas, you might assume it is easier. Shops are around, supermarkets are everywhere, and kiosks are on almost every corner. But even there, access is not guaranteed. A pack of pads is not cheap when you are from a struggling home.

 For some families, it is a choice between buying food for the day or buying sanitary pads. And when that choice shows up every month, it stops being a simple health issue and becomes a quiet financial burden that repeats itself.

In rural areas, it becomes even harder. Distance changes everything. A girl might have to walk long distances just to reach a shop that actually has pads in stock. And even when she gets there, the price does not change. 

The reality is still the same. If there is no money at that moment, she goes back home without them. So she improvises. She uses what she can find. She misses school. She waits for the next month and hopes it will be better, but often it is not.

What stands out is how normal this has become. A natural monthly process is met with inconsistency in supply, cost barriers, and silence. And yet it keeps happening, month after month, year after year.

And it makes you think… when we walk past people living on the streets in Nairobi or other towns, do we ever actually think about this part of their life? Do we ever pause and consider that a woman there is also going through the same monthly cycle, without privacy, without supplies, without certainty of where the next pad will come from? Or do we only see the surface of survival and forget the very human needs underneath it?

Because menstruation does not stop for poverty. It does not stop for homelessness. It does not stop for distance or lack of income. It happens anyway. And somehow, something so predictable is still treated as something optional in terms of access.

It should not be like this. Something so basic, something so essential, something that affects half the population at some point in their lives, should not be this difficult to access.

 In reality, it should not even be debated. It should be available, consistently, and without question.

But right now, in Kenya, for many girls and women, it still is.

By Daniel ndung'u maina