The Pad Project

This past weekend I made my way to Chisenga to visit an education volunteer, Susan. She has been at her site since last August and works as a teacher at the local secondary school. She asked Isabel, Dylan to help out with a program called the Pad Project for girls 14-18. The pad project was started to help girls in their teens stay in school. Here in Malawi, when a girl starts menstruating, often she will stop attending school due to the attitude of girls being “dirty” during this time, especially since sanitary materials are not readily available to the girls like they are in the states. They will often miss school for week, which puts them behind their fellow classmates and just adds to the other challenges young women face to get an education in this country. The project itself involves sewing local fabric into napkins that are easy to wash and assemble. Susan did a great job instructing the girls and providing them with everything they would need. She took the opportunity to put together an informal panel where the girls could ask any questions they wanted anonymously to us. During our pre-service training we discussed the challenges young girls face, but I haven’t had the opportunity to talk face-to-face with a teenage Malawian girl about her life. I wanted to share some of the questions they wrote and gave to us in advance that we discussed on the panel.

“What should I do if I have a boyfriend who has other girlfriends but he loves me more than everyone?”

“How can I go to university? What way can I be a nurse? What can I do to come up with good points on my exams? What can I do to be educated? What can I do to see your country?”

“What should I do if I have passed my exams with good results and I want to apply for some jobs but some people are discouraging? Why boys and girls when are in courtship if they want to do sex they use condom and what is the results when they fail to use condom?”

“Why is sex important? How can one get HIV/AIDS? Why is education important? Is it good that girl and boy should have engage in sex?”

“What should I do to fulfill my ambitions? I have decided to be a soldier after my education, but some people are discouraging me that I am weak and can’t manage the training at soldiers, what should I do?”

“I want to ask about: Teenage pregnancy, sex, boyfriends, education”

“What can happen if you make sex with a boyfriend while you are at monthly period? If I don’t have parents and I don’t have school fees, how can you help me? How can I care about myself while I am in monthly period?”

“If my boyfriend want to have sex with me, while I do not want to have sex, what can I do? I stopped my education because I have impregnated so I want to start again, but I’m fearing that my boyfriend can start gossiping me and discriminating me what can I do with this problem? I want to continue learning and my parents want me to be married while I don’t want to so how can you help me to solve this issue? My boyfriend is HIV positive while I myself am HIV negative, so he want to marry me, what can I do?”

“Is it true that when a girl is on period she can go to sleep with a boy and she cannot get pregnant? If you are married and you have one child do you get your period again? What does the term period mean?”

“Is having sex before marriage not good? Is having sex without condoms dangerous? I have a boyfriend and he want to have sex without condoms, I don’t want to have sex without condoms, but my boyfriend says he is going to reject me, but I love him so much. What can I do to solve the problem? I like school very much and this year I want to go to college, so tell me the steps I must follow to be a good leader of Malawi so that I can reach up choosing a good goal in my life. What is the best subject for one who wants to go to college? What makes you want to teach at this stage? I myself want to be like you, tell me how please!”

There are so many things I wanted and tried to say to these girls as they were staring up at us. Some of these questions were harder to answer than others, but I think we all did a good job trying to empower these girls. There are so many issues to address, I just hope that some of what I do while I am here will make a difference.