‘Period. End of Sentence’

Ladies and gentlemen, let it be known that 2019 is the year a documentary about menstruation won an Academy Award.

Achieving the incredible in ‘Period. End of Sentence’ (2018), director Rayka Zehtabchi takes us to an Indian village in western Uttar Pradesh where talk of menstruation is taboo, women use whatever cloth they can find to stop their monthly flow and the challenges of managing their periods result in young girls leaving school, some never to return.

Though the situation is a dire one, ‘Period. End of Sentence’ is a 26-minute celebration.

Introducing audiences to a handful of incredible Indian women who slowly begin to change lives and perceptions through the manufacturing of pads on Arunachalam Murganantham’s pad machine – the story of which is told in R Balki’s ‘Pad Man’ (2018) – the Netflix documentary flits through schools, the pad manufacturing plant and the women’s homes, shedding light on their challenges and society’s hard-held beliefs about menstruation.

“We don’t come to the temple during our periods. We don’t pray to any of the gods during our periods. The elders in the house say that the prayer isn’t heard, no matter how much you pray.”

Despite the negative religious and societal beliefs about menstruation, pad producers like Sneha, Rehka, Suman and Shabana are determined. Producing pads on the machine whenever access to electricity will allow, the women eventually venture out to sell and demonstrate how to use their low-cost biodegradable pads.

They are what many Indian women have been waiting for and the pad producers, some of whom are earning their own income for the first time in their lives, name them Fly.

“We have installed this machine for women. So, now we want women to rise and fly.”

In Namibia, a notable parallel is The Power Pad Girls, which raises funds for the distribution of reusable pads and states that “thousands of Namibian school girls miss an average of three school days a month as a result of not being able to afford menstrual products, which has a knock-on effect on the quality of education that they receive”.

Stream this to watch something real, inspiring and summarised in a comment by ‘the pad man’ himself.

“The strongest creation created by God in the world. Not the lion, not the elephant, not the tiger… the girl.”

The pad machine and documentary were funded by students at Oakwood School in Los Angeles

via bake sales, Kickstarter and yogathons. Join their effort to install more pad machines worldwide by supporting The Pad Project at thepadproject.org.

‘Period. End of Sentence’ (2018) is now streaming on Netflix.

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com

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