Wartime period. ‘You can’t stop thinking that everyone is about to see you bleeding’
There are 800 women in a closed psychoneurological centre in Kiev. They range in age from 18 to 70 and suffer from various mental disorders. Most of them menstruate.
But the centre’s supply of sanitary pads has recently run out, and another shipment has not arrived. Because of the war, the production of the company that won the state tender has stopped, and some warehouses are empty, some have been destroyed. Women at the centre were left without sanitary pads.
There are tens of thousands of them all over Ukraine. Outside the country, thousands more.
INTIMACY
When war broke out on 24 February, Maria had just got her period. ‘I thought: at least I don’t have to sit in a bomb shelter for the first few days of my period. But it happened differently. On the very first day, my mother, sister and I had to run to the shelter’, says Maria Tushkova from Kiev.
They had a moment to pack the essentials: underwear, water, blanket, food, toothbrush and toothpaste, sweater, cap.... One of them remembered her sanitary pads before going down to the shelter.
‘We ran to the nearest shelter, which years ago had been converted into a coffee shop. There were about 80 people there. Mostly children and women, some older people. We sat crowded together; there was no place to lie down. We slept, sitting at the table, if someone was lucky, they managed to lie down on the floor for a while. It was cold, the wind was still blowing’, says Maria. ‘Converted into a café, the shelter was underground, but the bathroom was on the first floor. So every trip to the restroom was risky. I needed to go to the bathroom more often than usual, but I was scared. Each time, I wondered if I definitely needed to go already, or if the pad could last a few more hours. I was nervous that it would seep through. It was difficult – zero intimacy, zero comfort, limited access to the bathroom and sanitary pads because we took one pack from home, wet wipes were also running out. So on the one hand it gets to you: we have a war, and on the other hand you can’t stop thinking that in a moment everyone will see you bleeding’.
Lena Ushanova, a volunteer who has been delivering hot meals to the needy in Kiev since the beginning of the war, says the women had the most stress at the beginning of the war. ‘For the first week or two, it was unclear how the stores would operate. Stocks of everything were running low, new deliveries weren’t coming in, some stores were closed or open one day a week. There was no telling what day it would be. So people came out of their shelters and walked around the neighbourhood looking for open stores and the most necessary items, and when they found something, they bought in bulk’.
They also went home during the day. ‘Then the girls washed themselves, changed their pads or tampons and underwear. For the time of the bomb alert and curfew, they went down to the shelters again’, says Lena.
She says she has had irregular periods since the war began. ‘Suddenly everything turned upside down, I know my body is going crazy, that it’s probably due to stress. My period is still a surprise to me now, but I don’t really think about it’, she muses. ‘I think this is one of those experiences that women in war are left alone with and just have to deal with. They don’t talk about it among themselves, even if they have a problem because there is a shortage of water or sanitary pads, because they think there are more important things after all. That’s why I just try to always have a pad or tampon with me’.
HUMILIATION
But not every woman always has them with her. Małgorzata Sztolf, a volunteer who helps refugee women at the border, tells the story: ‘The customs officers and I saw women arriving at the border in bloodstained clothes, covering their trousers. They didn’t say much, they didn’t ask for pads, tissues, underwear or soap, but we saw how humiliated they felt’.
It was the female customs officers who, after the outbreak of war, first distributed their own hygiene products to women crossing the border and then alerted volunteers and aid organisations to the problem. In the bathrooms at the border, they tried to leave sanitary pads of Ukrainian companies so that women would have no doubt what they were. ‘Customs officers often cried when talking about women who felt ashamed and humiliated and could not ask for fresh underwear or a pad’, says Małgosia.
And Emilia Kaczmarczyk, who works for the organisation Akcja Menstruacja [Menstruation Action], adds: ‘It’s hard to ask for a pad when Google Translate translates that word from Ukrainian to Polish as ‘seal’. The women arrive at the border after many days of travel, often in Spartan conditions, some of them survived hell in Ukraine, they are in shock, tired, and they end up in a foreign country. If they do not speak the language, it is difficult for them to ask about hygiene products. This is a situation where a person just withdraws.
Since the beginning of the war, the Menstruation Action has been providing sanitary pads for Ukrainian women to aid and reception points at the border.
Emilia says: ‘When the war started, we saw a great mobilisation of people who wanted to help. But we knew this spurt wouldn’t last forever. Anyway, sanitary pads, liners or other hygiene products for women are not the gifts that we put in the refugee basket in the first place. Yes, they did happen, but unfortunately, they were often the cheapest, simplest pads. Thick, wingless ones that soak quickly and are hard to feel comfortable in. The reception centres and refugee assistance centres themselves often forgot about sanitary pads when making lists of the most needed items. As if menstruation stopped during the war’.
Menstruation Action has so far donated over 20 pallets of sanitary pads to the border. One pallet equals 1080 packages. One package equals 10 sanitary pads on average. Each pallet costs approx. 4 thousand zlotys. Why sanitary pads? Because tampons require more hygiene and are more expensive. And so are menstrual cups – you need at least a little water to be able to rinse them, and it is not always available.
One brand of menstrual panties has sent 100 pairs to Ukraine, but it’s unclear how popular they are there.
The scale of need is enormous, and people are slowly showing burnout. The shelves in the stores from which refugees can take what they need are empty. ‘Aid is decreasing, needs are increasing. The society is tired, people cannot afford to help permanently, and less wealthy people, who could not afford to travel before and who need support in every dimension, are now coming to Poland; whenever they have a choice: food or sanitary pads, they will choose the former’.
Meanwhile, lack of access to hygiene and cleaning supplies or water can be hazardous to refugee women’s health. Research conducted in 2017 by Global One (which fights poverty and disease) in refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon found that more than 60% of refugee women have no access to underwear, and most have no hygiene products. Half of the women suffered from urinary tract infections.
A study by United Nation Women in Cameroon showed that 99% of refugee women do not have access to safe spaces where they are provided with intimacy and comfort to change menstrual products. So they have to use public places, which in turn makes them more vulnerable to sexual violence.
SOCK
How are refugee women coping?
Anna: ‘I got my period while travelling to Poland. I wasn’t prepared for it because my period was about two weeks early. At first I stacked tissues in my panties, but that only helped for a while. Then I took a sock, stuffed it in my panties, and put paper on that. That’s how I crossed the border. It was a horrible feeling’.
Ukrainian women today cope similarly to refugees from Syria, with little more at their disposal than our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did during World War II 80 years ago. Back then, they often used paper as menstrual supplies, and there was even a shortage of cotton wool, bandages, or dressings that were intended for wounded soldiers.
‘Paper was sent in parcels, paper was scrupulously collected so that it could be used for hygienic purposes. After all, women, you know, that old lady didn’t have her periods any more, but we had our periods, it was macabre’, recalls Hanna Kumuniecka-Chełmińska, a nurse who took part in the Warsaw Uprising, in Anna Herbich’s book “Dziewczyny z powstania” (Girls from the Uprising). In the Oral History Archive of the Warsaw Uprising Museum she also talked about how big a problem access to water was: ‘We washed in cold water with ice more than once, twice a day, sometimes there was a little bit of warm water, and we just scooped some warm water into a bowl, one by one, in order, one of us washed, then another one, if we were lucky the bowl could be filled twice. Of course, later we had to pee in that bowl or something’, said Hanna Kumuniecka-Chełmińska.
Anyway, water was one of the scarcest commodities during World War II. Genowefa Flak recalled: ‘it was difficult to “wash properly”. ‘We had to look for a bathroom that still had water in it. So it wasn’t easy. We thought about it, even more than about food, for one thing because it was hot, so we always wanted to wash, and besides, these hygiene issues were necessary’, she recalled in the Oral History Archive.
‘Women, as long as they could, washed in strangers’ flats, in city fountains, often at night, in cold water. Sometimes they had half a litre of water a day. And you had to wash, drink and prepare something to eat. We washed every second or third day, I think, and we would pour the water down and then one by one we would wash. It was always better than nothing’, recalled nurse Cecylia Górska.
‘We are probably better off because despite the war in Ukraine there is water most of the time’, says Lena Ushanova, a volunteer from Kiev.
Ukrainian women believe that they will not be in such an extreme situation where they will have to use moss or leaves. But they are ashamed to admit that they sometimes use pieces of clothing, tissues, toilet paper, or pieces of rags as sanitary pads. However, sometimes they prefer this to asking for menstrual products.
SHAME
A group of women from Ukraine arrived at a guesthouse in northern Poland. One day, the owner of the guesthouse noticed one of the Ukrainian girls was constantly fidgeting, looking in the mirror, restless, hanging around the bathroom. Finally, she asked her if something was wrong, if she got her period. The girl admitted that she did, but didn’t want to talk about it at all. After a while, it turned out that none of the women who came to the guesthouse had any sanitary pads or tampons with them; they were all embarrassed to ask for them.
Volunteer Lena Ushanova: ‘Menstruation is still a taboo subject in Ukraine. In the younger generation this is changing, women are slowly starting to talk to their husbands or partners about their periods, about feeling bad about it or needing to buy pads, for example. But we still have a long way to go to make this topic natural’.
Olha Menko, who has lived in Poland for five years, recalls: ‘I myself was raised in such a way that a man should not see a sanitary pad. This topic was treated like something disgusting, “God forbid your guy sees a pad, no way”. When I went to Sweden a few years ago, I saw people openly talking about periods. Colleagues made tea for the girls, gave compresses, and gave massages. At first I felt outrage, but today I wish we would all pay attention to the problem of women, refugee women, Ukrainian women, who do not have access to menstrual products in times of crisis. It affects their psyche a lot’, says Olha. In Kraków she runs a portal for people coming from Ukraine.
The women’s neuropsychological centre which had run out of sanitary pads came to her for help. We managed to get a supply for four months. ‘We hope that this is enough, that this war will end soon’.
Author: Dominika Wantuch
Illustrated by: Marta Frej
The text was published in „Wolna Sobota” a magazine of „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 21 May 2022
