Health Education

Imagine you are a 12 year old Maasai girl away at boarding school, and you get your period for the first time.  As is culturally normal, your mother never talked to you about this, all the teachers at the school are male, and without a computer or internet you cannot Google these symptoms.  So, where do you turn for answers?  How do you know if you are cursed, sick, or normal?

This is reality for many Maasai school girls.  That is why, when our 2014 OVC/Education and Health Interns began visiting schools, the teachers begged them to talk female to female with the girls.  So, they began holding a 2-4 hour session in the schools focusing on the two things most girls had never heard; God created females in His image, and changes are normal when a girl becomes a woman.  This also led into an opportunity to talk about hygiene and answer specific questions.

During each session the girls began to listen nervously and hid their faces in embarrassment.  Each time, they slowly began to open up, lift their heads, and tentatively ask questions.  In the end, we pray they left confident of their value in God’s eyes, convinced they are normal and not cursed, and equipped to deal with their monthly periods instead of taking a week each month off of school.