Uganda
Experiences of Menstruation from the Global South and North – review
In Experiences of Menstruation from the Global South and North, Kay Standing, Sara Parker and Stefanie Lotter compile multidisciplinary perspectives examining experiences of and education around menstruation in different parts of the world. Spanning academic research, activism and poetry, this thought-provoking volume advocates for inclusive approaches that encompass the diverse geographical, social, cultural, gender- and age-related subjectivities of menstruators worldwide, writes Udita Bose.
As Bobel writes in the foreword to Experiences of Menstruation from the Global South and North, “Menstruation is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere” (xvii). The book attempts to create dialogues between the Global North and Global South, recognising that menstrual experiences are a global issue, but the stigma, shame, and secrecy surrounding menstruation, make it difficult to address the various problems associated with menstruation.
The book criticises how discourse about menstruation in the Global South is characterised by the development approach produced by the Global North.
The book criticises how discourse about menstruation in the Global South is characterised by the development approach produced by the Global North. In the introduction, Lotter et al argue that development approaches adopted in the Global South focusing on “alleviating poverty and working towards gender equality and improvement of living conditions” (10) have reinforced stigma associated with menstruation. This occurs because such development approaches centre the supply and demand of menstrual products, which, according to Garikipati in Chapter Seven, promotes the concealment of menstruation through the use of menstrual products (105). Lotter et a argue that a decolonial approach will help to acknowledge that countries in the Global South have made “trailblazing developments” (11) in destigmatising menstruation and tackling period poverty: Kenya ended the taxation of menstrual products long before Canada, in 2004 (11). The editors thus call for the Global North to learn from the Global South and promote a collaborative global approach when discussing menstrual experiences.
The book identifies how a lack of scientific knowledge and information about menstruation exacerbates the stigmatising of sociocultural experiences associated with it
The collaborative approach is evident in how the chapters in the collection have been organised and linked. For instance, the book identifies how a lack of scientific knowledge and information about menstruation exacerbates the stigmatising of sociocultural experiences associated with it, in the Global North and the Global South. King (Chapter Three) discusses at length how “physiology textbooks” recommended for medical students in the UK do not explain that even though menstruation is a prerequisite for conception and pregnancy, they do not inevitably follow from menstruation (24). Such emphasis on the alleged “purpose” of the menstruating body obscures the reality of the experience for women and girls. The pain, discomfort and blood loss that regularly accompany menstruation is minimised, hindering girls’ and women’s ability to respond to and understand their own bodies. This resonates with Amini’s research in Iran (Chapter 12). Amini demonstrates how most girls in Iran respond to menarche thinking that they have either lost their virginity or have a bad illness (165). These chapters show how the experience of the biological process of menstruation is conditioned by the cultural meaning it gains in a context.
Research [in Nepal] found that intersecting factors like caste, religious ideologies and ethnicity determine whether a teacher can discuss menstruation in school.
Amini’s research connects to that of Parker et al (Chapter Four) which, based in Nepal, reiterates the importance of imparting knowledge about menstruation and placing it in its sociocultural context. Their research found that intersecting factors like caste, religious ideologies and ethnicity determine whether a teacher can discuss menstruation in school. In this chapter and in the research project Dignity Without Danger – a research project launched in 2021 by Subedi and Parker developing and gathering educational resources on menstruation in Nepal (2021) – research participants noted that they were left to study the topic of menstruation on their own (38). The contextualisation of menstrual knowledge also frames the work by Garikipati (Chapter Seven) who focuses her research on menstrual products in the Indian context (103). Along with criticising the profit-driven global market, she emphasises the need to focus on sustainable development. Garikipati advocates for solutions that are tailored appropriately to the individual context (105).
The discussions on contextualising knowledge production about menstruation by researchers in diverse sociocultural and physical contexts underline the need for inclusivity. Inclusion is discussed in relation to several dimensions of menstrual knowledge production. Various researchers have captured menstrual experiences in the everyday context of the workplace (Fry et al, Chapter Eight), the school (Parker et al, Chapter Four; King, Chapter Three), the community (Garikipati, chapter Seven; Quint, Chapter Five; Macleod, Chapter 13) and the home (Amini, Chapter 12). In every setting, it is the menstruating body whose agency takes centre stage. This is enabled through the diverse and creative research methods employed by the researchers to explore menstrual experiences. For instance, Macleod (Chapter 13) had menstruating girls shoot films to narrate their menstrual experiences and held informal sessions in the schools in Gombe and Buwenge in Uganda to watch the films (190). This resonates with Lessie’s (Chapter Two) multi-sectoral approach to addressing menstruation and menstrual health. As Letsie underscores, the right to information and the right to health are basic human rights. Menstrual health is therefore a human rights issue, and its inclusion in health and development policies and programmes should be prioritised.
The book encompasses menstruating bodies at different stages of life, be it menarche or menopause
The book encompasses menstruating bodies at different stages of life, be it menarche or menopause (Weiss et al, Chapter 10), and menstruating bodies that are disabled (Basnet et al, Chapter Nine). The concluding pages of the book discuss the future prospects of research on menstruation. In doing so, Standing et al highlight the need for more research on “menstruators at margins” (230), for example, menstruators in prisons and detention centres, in humanitarian settings, sex workers, and those with disabilities. Thomson’s (Chapter 11) poem calls for normalising menstruation irrespective of gender and menopause irrespective of age, describing voluntary menopause at a young age to convert from being a female to a male (“because when I was a little girl, I knew I wasn’t…I just thank God that me and my Mother’s menopause didn’t align” 156-157). The poem echoes Lotter et al’s observation in the introduction that “not all women have periods and not all people who menstruate are women” (7). More than seeing menstruation through a lens of gender, it needs to be seen as “an issue of equity and justice” (7).
In this way, the book thus comes full circle in attempting to locate the menstruating body at the epicentre of the school and integrate all other sectors of society (family, community, policy development) into the production of knowledge on menstruation. The amplification of the need for inclusivity is particularly valuable, recognising the differences between menstrual experiences in the Global North and the Global South and challenging the gender binary, as captured in Thomson’s poetry. It is a thought-provoking volume which exposes the reader to the geographical, social, cultural, gender- and age-related subjectivities in which menstruation is experienced, examined through a variety of epistemological approaches. The book thus sets the ball rolling for further advancement of knowledge production around menstrual experiences in all their diversity.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: PINGO’s Forum on Flickr.
Turning Waste Into Charcoal in Uganda
This story originally appeared in Earth Island Journal.
It’s mid-morning in Uganda’s Mabira rainforest. Godliver Businge stands outside her home, full of good spirit and ready to get to work. Around her, a gathering of women steadily forms, creating a circle around an outdoor stove, as the sweet aromas of barbecue rise into the tree canopy. At first glance, this is a familiar scene — women preparing a meal for their families and community. Yet, within this seemingly routine gathering, a quiet revolution is taking shape.
Each woman here is participating in a training course, learning to craft and cook with charcoal briquettes made from organic waste — part of a grassroots conservation effort aimed at protecting Uganda’s last standing forests. Uganda’s Mabira Forest spans 74,000 acres of forests, hilltops and verdant stream valleys. In the forest, wide-eyed, gray-cheeked mangabey monkeys hang from the branches, while flocks of tit-hylia songbirds flit through the leaves and violet-winged butterflies perch on flowering plants. The Mabira forest is one of the only places in the world to host these rare species of monkeys, birds, and butterflies. The survival of these species, however, depends on the survival of Mabira itself.
The richly biodiverse Mabira reserve is the largest remaining block of semi-evergreen rainforest in the Victoria Basin. It is also home to settled human enclaves that depend on the forest.
Charcoal briquettes from organic waste have a number of benefits, including burning cleaner and slower and saving women valuable time. Credit: Axel Fassio / CIFOR-ICRAF
Today, the prevalence of deforestation threatens the forest’s longevity, along with the communities, human and otherwise, living in or around it. “One of the biggest rainforests in Africa — the Mabira Forest — is now a forest just by the roadside,” says Businge, the Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) Uganda program lead and a co-founder of the Uganda Women’s Water Initiative (UWWI). “But if you go behind it, the forest has been cut down.” (WEA is a project of Earth Island Institute, which also publishes the Journal.)
Uganda is home to the highest density of primates of any country in the world. According to the Convention of Biological Diversity, the country’s forests harbor at least 7.8 percent of the world’s known mammal species and 11 percent of its bird species.
These high concentrations of biodiversity, as well as the environmental and human health benefits provided by these forests, are threatened by the rapid, dramatic loss of forest cover. In the past 20 years, Uganda has lost over one million hectares of tree cover — nearly a third of the country’s total. “The forests are being turned into gardens,” Businge says.
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While the expansion of agricultural land and illegal logging have indeed contributed to forest loss, charcoal production is the primary destructor of Uganda’s forests. Charcoal is made by heating wood (logged from forests) at high temperatures and in the absence of oxygen. Today, Ugandans remain highly dependent on charcoal for cooking: nearly a quarter of the country’s 46 million people rely on charcoal to cook their meals, based on UN data. To meet this demand, charcoal producers have engaged in the illegal clearing of protected forest reserves, resulting in the loss of critical animal habitat and sustainable food resources, including fruit trees. This not only jeopardizes biodiversity but risks Ugandan food security.
Unlike neighboring countries Kenya and Tanzania, which have stricter conservation laws, Uganda “is such an open market that you can do anything, you can trade in anything,” Businge says. The availability of charcoal in Uganda puts additional pressure on its forests, as non-Ugandan loggers cross borders to cut trees.
Credit: Axel Fassio / CIFOR-ICRAF
Making the briquettes involves mixing char from carbonized organic waste with a starch or clay-based binder. The mixture can then be molded by hand, or using a machine, into round briquettes.
Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment says it is committed to “avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating adverse environmental and social impacts associated with its projects,” and to “zero tolerance to fraud and corruption,” but in reality, many forest crimes continue.
Businge described how loggers bribe the government’s Climate Change Department, which operates under the Ministry of Water and Environment and in theory, is responsible for enforcing regulations, “[but] actually allows you to cut trees — uncontrollably.” While “the existing laws say cut one tree, plant two,” Businge says, “those laws are not enforced.”
To address the environmental concerns surrounding charcoal use, then, women leaders in Uganda have developed an alternative: the use of organic waste — mostly food scraps that would otherwise go uneaten — instead of wood, to make charcoal briquettes.
Making charcoal briquettes from organic waste provides a number of benefits. “Organic waste is free,” says Comfort Hajra Mukasa, WEA’s East Africa regional director at WEA and a leader and educator at UWWI, who trains women to make the briquettes. “It’s readily available. The mixture of vegetables, carbs, and proteins, offers a ‘balanced diet’ for the charcoal briquettes. The charcoal burns slower, [so] you use less to cook more.”
Ugandans remain highly dependent on charcoal for cooking: nearly a quarter of the country’s 46 million people rely on charcoal to cook their meals. Credit: Axel Fassio / CIFOR-ICRAF
It also saves women valuable time. “Nowadays, bio [wood from trees] is really scarce,” Hajra Mukasa says. “Forests are not near, so someone has to really walk. Also, firewood is expensive. We are working with rural women. These are women who are walking long distances going to look for firewood. A lot of time is wasted in looking for firewood and bringing it home.”
Waste briquettes offer a realistic alternative to wood charcoal that does not force people to sacrifice their livelihoods. “If I’ve been selling firewood for an income [and] you do not give me an alternative income, I will continue to sell firewood, even if I see the importance of not cutting trees,” Hajra Mukasa says. “I am going to weigh between protecting the environment and protecting my children from dying from hunger. And I’ll ultimately go for protecting my children from dying.” But with waste briquettes, she explains, people can both protect their families’ well-being and gain income. They keep their livelihood, but they don’t cut trees to do it. And the waste briquettes burn cleaner. “It produces the best quality briquettes at the cheapest cost.”
For UWWI, Businge and Hajra Mukasa both train women in how to make charcoal briquettes from organic waste. “Our venues are not hotels,” Hajra Mukasa says. “Our venues are a woman’s home. So, we are very local.”
The briquette making process is fairly simple. Businge and Hajra Mukasa mix char from carbonized organic waste with a starch or clay-based binder. The mixture can then be molded by hand, or using a machine, into round briquettes. After drying, the briquettes are ready for cooking.
The training begins in the late morning, typically around 11 am, so that women have time to work in their gardens in the morning and attend to their other responsibilities. “We are cognizant of the fact that our women are wives and mothers,” Hajra Mukasa says, “and we always emphasize that we want you to be empowered women, but we want you to still remain African women who value family. We do not want to create a disconnect between culture and our movement.”
Credit: Axel Fassio / CIFOR-ICRAF
The plan takes a peer-to-peer approach, in which each woman that has been trained continues to train other women in the community.
UWWI also ensures that the entire community feels included in the process. They meet with as many people as possible, including men in the community, to help them understand the importance of the training and what to expect. “The politicians [also] need to know that this is not a rebel group or a government opposition group,” Hajra Mukasa says.
At the end of the training, program participants create action plans. “We make a commitment with the women to go and transfer the same knowledge to at least five other women,” Hajra Mukasa says. The plan takes a peer-to-peer approach, in which each woman that has been trained continues to train other women in the community. “We normally train 30 people and trust them to train another 150 people,” Hajra Mukasa says.
In addition to saving women time, the waste briquettes are a source of income. Women sell the briquettes at a variety of venues, including at events and by going door-to-door. Typically, women offer a few pieces to sample, and customers often quickly come back for more. “People know how badly they’ve damaged the environment,” Hajra Mukasa says. “Especially when the floods come. But this is an alternative.”
That choice is important now. “Gas as an alternative in rural communities [will be possible] maybe 100 years from now,” Hajra Mukasa says. The briquettes are better, allowing a healthy, environmentally sustainable lifestyle now and for generations to come. “In Uganda we are still rural, but we love being rural,” Hajra Mukasa says. “There is a lot of peace being rural, but we also want to live healthy.”
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The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization – review
In The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization, Jonathan Silver explores infrastructural evolution in the Global South, extrapolating from case studies in urban sub-Saharan Africa. Taking a broad interdisciplinary view, the book effectively shows how technology, inequality, climate change and private versus public investment shape contemporary infrastructural landscapes, writes Dagna Rams.
When delving into developmental reports about infrastructure in Africa, one stumbles upon assessments that it is “lagging behind” or “missing”. While it might be easy to point to “infrastructural gaps” and sigh at the scale of what is to be done, it is more difficult to understand what is actually happening, why, and with what consequences. Jonathan Silver’s Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization is the author’s attempt to conceptualise African infrastructures, focusing on the abundance of processes on the ground. Silver pays attention to the private investment being pumped into the continent, the government’s infrastructural spending, and the multiple individual and collective efforts to make the city work. The book is panoramic, using case studies from sub-Saharan urban Africa to extrapolate to the “Global South”. Its value comes from explaining how key trends such as growing inequalities, climate change and digital economies affect infrastructures, creating new path dependencies embedded in their material networks.
[The book’s] value comes from explaining how key trends such as growing inequalities, climate change and digital economies affect infrastructures
What is “third wave urbanisation” and what forms of infrastructures does it give rise to? What are the “techno-environments”? And how far does the “infrastructural south” reach? The jargon already present in the title foretells the author’s commitment to pair analysis with the coinage of new terms – at least one in almost every chapter. Their persuasiveness depends on their usefulness and ability to travel to other contexts far and wide.
Silver appropriates “third-wave urbanism” for the African context. Geography scholars might associate the term with its use to describe urbanisation propelled by the “knowledge” or “cognitive-cultural” economy – a process that moves cities away from their industrial past towards gentrification, impersonal office buildings and consumption based on lifestyle. Although never fully spelled out, the book tacitly situates the third wave after the colonial city-making which created racial and territorial divisions within cities (first wave?) and the independence-era modernisation and industrialisation that saw the building of some public housing (second wave?). The third wave is characterised by a dizzyingly rapid rise of the urban population amid the demise of the hitherto limited opportunities within the public and industrial sectors. The cities are landscapes of manifest inequality, most starkly between informal labour and the elites connected to extractive industries. Given the preponderance of these urban trends across the continent, the author sets out to explore the infrastructural outcomes they bring forth, or the condition of the “Infrastructural South”.
Private cities of Appolonia City outside Accra and Eko Atlantic outside Lagos […] represent new transfers of capital – from Asia and Russia – and ‘start again’ urbanisation for the ‘middle class’
The “Infrastructural South” is foremost characterised by different “techno-environments,” that is, infrastructural worlds characterised by distinct technological arrangements that alter environments. The most extreme examples of such “techno-environments” are the uncompleted but already materially present private cities of Appolonia City outside Accra and Eko Atlantic outside Lagos. They represent new transfers of capital – from Asia and Russia – and “start again” urbanisation for the “middle class”, promising a lack of congestion and reliable infrastructure. In contrast to these – still only – fantasies, ever more urban residents club to sprawling suburban neighbourhoods where houses precede infrastructure, and the latter is left for the people to figure out. “Techno-environment” is a useful coinage, especially amid climate change, when the extent to which people can harness the environment for their own projects or be exposed to its whims creates new social distinctions and a looming “eco-segregation” (56). Besides these, the book covers other transversal trends such as the development of “corridors” to increase infrastructural efficiency around areas of direct relevance to extractive industries or “disruptions,” that is, infrastructures created by technologies imposing new designs like Uber or harnessing what exists with the aim of making it more efficient like creating an app for booking an existing bus service.
The “Infrastructural South” is a condition that can be found anywhere
Though case studies from sub-Saharan Africa and three cities – Accra, Cape Town and Kampala – form the backbone of this study, the author emphasises that the “Infrastructural South” is a condition that can be found anywhere. To that point, the final pages look at the water pollution in Flint, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey as examples of the “Infrastructural South”. Here, like in other places visited in the book’s pages, much more is happening than a simple lack of money that drives a lack of infrastructure. For example, schools are given funding to buy bottled water for pupils to compensate for polluted tap water, and though fixes such as this are meant to be temporary, they create lasting path dependencies. Only some of the problems get addressed and the outcomes are variable (eg, while at school, kids do not drink polluted water, but may do so at home, especially if their parents are poor). The “Infrastructural South” is thus a condition of half-measures, half-funded, half-improvements that outsource ever more responsibilities onto the people and the private sector, undermining the promise of a “public” commonly associated with infrastructural investment.
The undeniable strength of the book is its ability to identify infrastructural trends and point in the direction of new research paths
The undeniable strength of the book is its ability to identify infrastructural trends and point in the direction of new research paths. Given the book’s reliance on case studies from the anglophone world, and specifically, destinations that attract financial capital such as Accra or Cape Town, there is also an important question about how the trends it identifies play out in other parts of the continent. In addition, the book strikes me as a particularly suitable introduction to the topic of infrastructure in urban Africa for interdisciplinary contexts, especially where students have had less exposure to post-colonial theory or critical urban studies.
Because of the broad scope of the research, the examples it uses – waste companies, public toilets, electricity solutions, private cities, and corridors – are outlined rather than explored in depth. The methodology relies on reports in the public domain and short visits to different infrastructural sites. The author states in relation to each visit whether he gave notice or arrived spontaneously, suggesting that the latter allowed him to pierce through appearances. One aspect in which the book leaves a reader wanting is with regards to the many people – infrastructure users and workers – who populate the pages: they are mentioned by first name alone and we learn very little about them other than the fact that their utterances support the author’s arguments. Given the number of people mentioned, I had a sense that the “Infrastructural South” is populated by crowds from Ablade Glover’s paintings – a multitude who are seen from enough of a distance to appear to be speaking in one voice, which does not chime with the picture of infrastructural inequalities and individualised strife otherwise represented in the author’s theory.
The durability of infrastructure means that it can have the power to define cities for years to come
The durability of infrastructure means that it can have the power to define cities for years to come, just as inequalities solidified in colonial infrastructures have defined contemporary urban fabric. Likewise, decisions made today can alter urban maps in ways that will be difficult to undo – a proposition that is especially consequential in the context wherein climate change preparedness plans emphasise the importance of resilience and adaptability. Infrastructures matter. As Silver’s book warns, it is important to interrogate whether the infrastructures touted, established and planned are meant to connect or disconnect urban populations, whether the material arrangements they create are based on solutions that see into the future of the public or fixes that favour private investment. The resounding worry of the book is that the latter is likelier, and that tendency is not only prevalent in urban Africa or even the Global South, but the world over.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: Kehinde Temitope Odutayo on Shutterstock.