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Drama as boys stampede, snatch girls sanitary pads thinking it’s food

Counties

thief

Residents of a sleepy village called Mwiyala in Kakamega County were treated to a light moment after curious, hungry boys stormed a school where locals were marking the International Day for the Girl Child (IDGC) and snatched sanitary towels, which they had mistaken for food.

Ordinarily, the day school is closed during weekends but on this particular weekend it was a bee hive of activity, seeing as it played host to the IDGC celebrations.

The presence of so many women and girls created suspicion and curiosity among the young boys who had no clue what was going on.

Stormed the compound

 “We were curious as to why the girls reported to school on Saturday, yet we know it’s a day no learning takes place at the school. That other girls from neighbouring schools joined them and sat under trees discussing, made us wonder all the more.

And to make matters worse, when we asked what they were up to, our teachers warned us to keep off,” explained a pupil at the school, whom Crazy Monday found hovering around the compound after the incident.

The boys’ curiosity was sharply aroused when they saw boxes full of neatly wrapped sanitary towels being offloaded from Nakumatt and Golf Hotel Trucks. When the event came to a close, the girls were given three to four sanitary towel packets, wrapped in glossy pink paper. They began to leave smiling and dancing.

Of course, this made the boys green with envy, and they just couldn’t take it anymore. Like raged bulls in a China shop, the boys, who had all along been kept at bay, stormed the compound.

No food to be found

They wrestled some of the girls before snatching away their ‘goodie’ bags, thinking they contained food.

Only for them to unwrap them and find nothing worth eating. In fact, it dawned on them that what they had taken was useless to them.

“We snatched these things (sanitary towels) from the girls because we thought it was some sort of snack which teachers didn’t want us to taste.

“When we opened them, they were soft and had a net-like, cloth lining, which covered a sponge. We have never seen them,” said a boy in Kiswahili, as his shocked and disappointed peers laughed their heads off.

Neglected boy child

Crazy Monday later learned that a local NGO ‘Hope Alive Girls Empowerment Programme’ (Hagep) in collaboration with Nakumatt Kakamega and Golf Hotel had organised the event and used it to distribute sanitary towels to girls from five local schools.

The over 500 girls were, among other things, taught life lessons, trained on personal hygiene and advised on women’s rights as they celebrated the day. And considering it was an event where boys were not needed, the teachers had kept them a way, something which added to the mystery of the event.

When some of the event organisers were asked to comment on the incident, they laughed and promised to do something to honour and empower the neglected boy child.

 

 

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