{"id":2760,"date":"2019-04-26T14:31:11","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T18:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/?p=2760"},"modified":"2019-05-17T13:12:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T17:12:23","slug":"breaking-taboos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/2019\/breaking-taboos\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Taboos"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Geneva

From left: In summer 2018, Geneva Magsino (CWR ’19) and Hannah Clarke spent two months in Sierra Leone, providing sexual health and hygiene education to girls who otherwise had few or no opportunities to discuss such topics openly. Photo by Henry Tilima James Lombie.<\/p><\/div>\n

Summer in Sierra Leone means torrential rain. July and August are the wettest months in this, one of the wettest countries in the world. Streets flood, hills collapse into mudslides and life in general does not go according to plan. Just ask Geneva Magsino<\/b> (CWR \u201919), who graduated this May with a degree in international studies, and Hannah Clarke<\/b>, a pre-med student and French major who will soon begin her third year at CWRU. The pair spent last summer in Freetown, Sierra Leone\u2019s capital, carrying out a public health project.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople stop their lives when it rains,\u201d Clarke says. On days when the downpour was heaviest, she and Magsino could not travel the steep roads to the girls\u2019 school where their project was based.<\/p>\n

For these two students, however, the rain was just one in a long series of lessons on flexibility. They had gone to Sierra Leone to teach underprivileged girls about menstruation, sex and their rights as women. They ran a two-month workshop through the local chapter of Girl Up, a United Nations Foundation program. <\/span><\/p>\n

In Sierra Leone, as in many parts of Africa, parents and children do not typically discuss intimate matters like menstruation and sex. \u201cIt\u2019s just taboo. You\u2019re not supposed to talk about it,\u201d says Yasmine Ibrahim, founding director of Girl Up Vine Club Sierra Leone. \u201cBut we can\u2019t not<\/em> talk about it when we have high rates of teen pregnancy and kids are getting married at the age of 14.\u201d Clarke and Magsino\u2019s workshop was one way to start that conversation.<\/p>\n

The participants, all members of Girl Up, were between 14 and 17 years of age. Through the organization, they received free menstrual products. But some still harbored misconceptions. \u201cThey\u2019d ask, \u2018Well, if you put a tampon in, how do you pee?\u2019\u201d Clarke says. Many feared they\u2019d lose their virginity if they used a tampon or menstrual cup. Others wondered what abdominal pain during menstruation meant. Was something wrong?<\/p>\n

The workshop included weekly discussions on everything from hygiene, sex and sexually transmitted infections to female genital mutilation and self-defense. Clarke remembers striving to keep the tone conversational and the dialogue open. Each session began with a discussion of the news of the day\u2014a standard Girl Up activity that encourages participants to follow important current events. Clarke also orchestrated \u201cquestion tosses\u201d during every session to engage the girls and create a lively mood. \u201cI had this little spray perfume bottle, so I\u2019d just throw it at random, and whoever caught it would have to answer a question,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cLike, \u2018How many months is a woman pregnant for?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarke did much of the teaching, while Magsino largely worked behind the scenes: budgeting, preparing presentations, designing brochures. \u201cWe definitely complement each other,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Let\u2019s do this! Let\u2019s take risks!\u2019 And Geneva is really calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hearing her friend describe her, Magsino laughs. \u201cI also don\u2019t know what I\u2019d do without Hannah,\u201d she says. \u201cI get really scared speaking in public, so it\u2019s nice to know Hannah can come in if I get stuck.\u201d From their account, one would think Clarke and Magsino had been preparing for months\u2014as indeed they had. But up until days before their flight, they\u2019d planned on traveling to an entirely different country. Periods for Peace Magsino and Clarke both grew up attuned to a world outside the United States. Clarke regularly visits family in the Bahamas, where her mother was raised. Magsino was born in the Philippines and lived there until she was 9 years old. By the time they enrolled at Case Western Reserve, both had decided to focus on global health.<\/p>\n

\"Clarke

During one of their sessions in Freetown, Sierra Leone\u2019s capital, Clarke and Magsino handed out menstrual pads supplied by Girl Up, a global organization dedicated to gender equality. Photo by Yasmine Ibrahim.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2015, as a first-year student, Magsino became passionate about issues related to sexual health and hygiene. She was irritated to discover that campus restrooms had no menstrual products\u2014a situation she blamed on the stigma surrounding menstruation. At the time, the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women and its Women in Science and Engineering Roundtable (WISER) were distributing free menstrual products at some campus locations, and these organizations were among Magsino\u2019s allies when she co-founded the Menstrual Product and Sexual Health Task Force to press for change. In response to the task force\u2019s activism, the university began providing free tampons and pads in campus restrooms in 2017.<\/p>\n

Encouraged by her success, Magsino immersed herself in research. She learned that in some parts of the world, young women suffer infection and miss school because they do not have access to menstrual products. And because the subject of menstruation and female sexuality is often taboo, girls sometimes lack even a basic understanding of their own anatomy and needs. Here was injustice on a different scale. Undaunted, Magsino developed a plan for a summer program providing menstrual products and sexual health and hygiene education to girls in southwestern Cameroon, where such services are sorely lacking. The area is subject to destabilizing socio-political unrest, and it isn\u2019t far from the stomping grounds of Boko Haram, the militant organization infamous for abducting young women.<\/p>\n

Magsino began contacting potential organizational partners, including a group in Cameroon and an international nonprofit, Days for Girls. She decided to seek funding for her plan from Projects for Peace, an initiative of the Davis United World College Scholars Program. (The university had become affiliated with the program in 2017, making CWRU students eligible for grants.) Next, she recruited four other undergraduates who shared her interest in global public health. Clarke was one of those students. She had been involved with advocacy organizations promoting gender equality since high school, so the project was a natural fit.<\/p>\n

The group ultimately secured funding from two sources: $10,000 from Projects for Peace, and $5,000 from Case Western Reserve\u2019s Office for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity. In a nod to their principal funder, they dubbed their project Periods for Peace.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the projects we get are amazing, but what elevated this project for us was its collaborative nature,\u201d says Amanda McCarthy<\/strong>, assistant dean of undergraduate studies, who helps coordinate the on-campus selection of Projects for Peace nominees. \u201cWe really appreciated that these students were savvy enough to know that they needed to work collaboratively with different agencies and partners, that they couldn\u2019t just swoop in and do it on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Workshop

During a workshop in a northern village called Gbinle, Clarke and Magsino decided to take the girls outside instead of spending all day in a classroom. \u201cWe played games, sang songs and shared personal stories in a circle, both sitting and standing,\u201d Magsino says. Photo by Geneva Magsino.<\/p><\/div>\n

Magsino’s group also enlisted the help of Gilbert Doho<\/strong>, associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. A specialist in French and Francophone studies, Doho is a native of Cameroon. Like McCarthy, he was deeply impressed with the group\u2019s proposal, which recognized gender inequality as a root cause of conflict. (The terrorist acts of Boko Haram, for example, are motivated in part by a belief that girls should not receive an education.) The students\u2019 approach to peace, Doho says, \u201cwas really original. And their maturity and sense of preparedness made me admire them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet as the students learned, you can\u2019t prepare for everything. The first wrinkle was that the group began to dwindle. One student decided to do an internship at MIT instead. Another was headed to the Peace Corps midsummer and decided to spend the weeks beforehand with family. The parents of a third decided the trip was too dangerous. By late May, only Magsino and Clarke remained. The pair was to depart the first week in June. As soon as finals ended, Clarke drove six hours to the Cameroonian embassy in Washington, D.C. \u201cWe needed our visas, and we were running out of time,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cThe embassy would never answer my calls.\u201dVisas in hand, they\u2019d be on their way.<\/p>\n

Or so they thought.<\/p>\n

Five days before their flight, Magsino and Clarke learned that violence had spiked in southwestern Cameroon. Kidnappings and killings were on the rise, spurred by tensions between Anglophone separatists and the Francophone government. Doho, who was visiting the region to assess its safety, recommended they cancel their trip.<\/p>\n

And with that, months of preparation seemed to go up in smoke. \u201cThere were moments when we felt the project would not work,\u201d Magsino says.<\/p>\n

But there was too much at stake for the pair to give up. The project was part of Magsino\u2019s capstone research\u2014a requirement for her graduation in May 2019. And Clarke had traveled abroad on a service trip every summer since her first year of high school. \u201cIt\u2019s like clockwork,\u201d Clarke explains. \u201cSo I said, \u2018No, this is not going to stop us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Magsino and Clarke called everyone they knew in sub-Saharan Africa. They reached out to organizations in Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda, seeking a new partner for their effort. Within days, they found a likely prospect: Through a friend, they connected with the Girl Up chapter in Freetown and were assured that the services they could provide were needed there.<\/p>\n

This time, it was Magsino\u2019s turn to make the long drive to Washington, D.C., for last-minute visas. \u201cThis embassy wouldn\u2019t return our calls either!\u201d she says. Incredibly, by mid-June, she and Clarke were on a plane to Sierra Leone. They\u2019d been gearing up for their stay in Cameroon for months: getting to know local contacts over Skype, planning curriculum for a large group of girls, gathering advice from Doho. And now they were off to a different country to work with a much smaller group of girls. It was as if they\u2019d enrolled in an impromptu summer course, Flying By the Seat of Your Pants 101. \u201cWe didn\u2019t even know where we were staying until right before we were boarding the plane,\u201d Magsino says.<\/p>\n

Lessons to Build On<\/span><\/h3>\n

The students initially lived in Aberdeen, an upscale expatriate community in Freetown, but quickly realized it wasn\u2019t for them. \u201cThat first week, we didn\u2019t meet anyone who was Sierra Leonean except for those who were serving us, which we felt very awkward about,\u201d Magsino says. So they moved to an apartment in a different neighborhood, one where they could watch World Cup soccer at the tailor shop across the street and mingle with locals at the grocery store. \u201cWe had a much more organic experience of the country there,\u201d Clarke says.<\/p>\n

\"Clarke,

Clarke and Magsino trained some of their teenage students in Freetown as workshop facilitators. Then they all traveled to Sierra Leone\u2019s Northern Province to educate local girls about women\u2019s health. One of their partner sites was a church in the village of Makeni. From left: Clarke, Gladis Ansumana, Alimatu Idella, Yasmine Ibrahim (director of the Freetown chapter of the Girl Up program), Magsino and Mariama S. Jalloh. Photo courtesy of Geneva Magsino.<\/p><\/div>\n

Magsino and Clarke were immediately impressed by the young women they taught in Freetown. \u201cWhen I was that age, I did not have that kind of confidence,\u201d Magsino says. \u201cThey just seemed very sure of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ibrahim, Girl Up Vine Club\u2019s director, grew up in the United States, and she says the Freetown girls were excited to interact with two more foreigners. For someone in her role, she adds, \u201cIt was great to have like-minded people to work with.\u201d Ibrahim typically recruits Sierra Leonean college students to help with the club, but because of cultural taboos, she has to train them intensively to discuss topics like menstruation.<\/p>\n

Hoping that their students could help break such taboos, Magsino and Clarke taught some of them to lead their own workshops. Then, late in the summer, the whole group brought the project to Sierra Leone\u2019s Northern Province, a rural area where it was necessary to make some adjustments to the curriculum. Some of the young women in the province were illiterate, while others had had only a little schooling. Access to sanitary products was limited; most of the girls used cloth instead. \u201cWe had to tell them if you do use cloth, make sure you leave it out to dry in the sun to kill some of the bacteria and avoid infection,\u201d Clarke says.<\/p>\n

The trip \u201cupcountry\u201d was a chance for Magsino and Clarke to bond with the Freetown girls. They cooked couscous together and talked about boys. They stayed up till late at night, when it is cheaper to make calls in Sierra Leone, dialing up friends and giggling and passing the phone around. \u201cIt was really nice to hang out with them as friends and not \u2018We\u2019re here to teach you,\u2019\u201d Magsino says.<\/p>\n

Clarke says the emotional ties they built also served a purpose. \u201cI am pretty extroverted,\u201d she says, \u201cbut now I see why it\u2019s important to form deeper connections with people when you\u2019re trying to get something done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Magsino says that her time in Sierra Leone helped her lighten up. \u201cI really like organization and structure and don\u2019t go with the flow a lot,\u201d she says. \u201cThis experience taught me that it\u2019s okay if not everything works out the way you want it to.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The students have sought out chances to build on the lessons they learned in Sierra Leone. This spring, they both studied abroad in Senegal and brought Periods for Peace to a bilingual school there. In December, they\u2019ve arranged to deliver the program again in Togo. Clarke hopes to pursue research opportunities in global health in summer 2019, and Magsino is looking for a post-graduation job involving sexual and reproductive health, preferably on a global level. But neither is willing to leave Periods for Peace behind. In fact, the pair is applying for nonprofit status.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went through a lot doing this project, and we were so flexible. I am like, \u2018Wow, go us!\u2019\u201d Clarke says. \u201cI can see us traveling the world doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrea Appleton is a freelance writer in Baltimore.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summer in Sierra Leone means torrential rain. July and August are the wettest months in this, one of the wettest countries in the world. Streets flood, hills collapse into mudslides and life in general does not go according to plan. …Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":2824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/147\/2019\/04\/01113128\/Magsino_Clarke_featured.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2760"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2946,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2760\/revisions\/2946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}