Jala Adamu

When I was thirteen, I missed school for five days straight because of blood. Not an injury, not illness—just my period. I bled through my skirt during math class, wrapped my sweater around my waist while the boys laughed and pointed. At home, I cried. My mother, without saying much, tore a strip from an old cloth and told me to use it “until it stopped.” No explanation. No comfort. Just cloth and silence.

Now I’m eighteen, and that memory still stings—not just the shame, but the loneliness. I thought something was wrong with me. No one told me it was normal. I grew up in Aburi, near Accra, Ghana, where everyone knows your business but no one talks about this.

I volunteer with a foundation that holds talks on sexual and reproductive health. We speak in schools and churches—when they’ll let us. The last session was in a school with broken windows and no toilets. One girl, maybe twelve, told me she uses newspaper during her period. She said it like it was normal. I told her it wasn’t—not because of her, but because she deserves better. I hope she believed me.

At a training, we learned to use social media to educate—videos, WhatsApp, Instagram. I started recording short clips in Twi and English: what periods are, how to wash reusable pads, why there’s no shame in bleeding. I post them, and sometimes people laugh, but sometimes girls message to say thank you. A boy I knew from school once called me “disgraceful.” I blocked him.

What angers me most is that pads are taxed like luxury items. As if dignity is something extra. Most families can’t afford them. And the people deciding this? Mostly men. Men who won’t even say the word menstruation.

I want to change that. I don’t want girls to feel the way I did—ashamed, isolated, dirty. I want boys to understand too. I want my little brother to grow up knowing that period blood isn’t something to mock.

It’s not just a woman’s issue. It’s everyone’s issue. And I’ll keep talking until they listen.