NILIMA JAHAN and TAHIRA SHAMSI UTSA

Three years ago, when 12-year-old Ayesha Begum got her first period, she thought she was dying.

Alone in a sweltering tin-roofed shack in Dhaka’s Korail slum, she curled up under the bed -- frightened, confused, and unaware of what was happening to her body.

No one had ever explained menstruation to her -- not a teacher, not a health worker, not even her mother.

“I thought something was broken inside me,” she said. “I didn’t even know the word for it.”

Her mother, Shahnoor Begum, a domestic worker, handed her a piece of old cloth after returning from work and simply said, “It happens to all girls.”

In Dhaka’s slums, menstruation is not seen as a natural biological milestone. It is endured as a recurring emergency -- shrouded in shame and compounded by poverty, inadequate sanitation, and social silence.

With clean water scarce, communal toilets shared by dozens of families lacking privacy, and menstrual products often unaffordable, managing a period becomes a monthly ordeal.

As the world marks Menstrual Hygiene Day today (May 28) under the theme “Together for a #PeriodFriendlyWorld,” the lived experiences of girls like Ayesha reveal how far Bangladesh’s urban poor remain from that goal.

To avoid changing clothes during the day, Ayesha layers damp rags and secretly washes her soiled clothes in limited water when no one is around.

“There’s nowhere proper to dry them, so I hang them behind the stove,” she said. “They stay damp and smell bad. It’s hard to maintain proper hygiene like this.”

The consequences are predictable -- rashes, irritation, infections, and long-term reproductive health issues.

Each month, Ayesha suffers severe cramps, worsened by the repeated use of unsanitary clothes.

“I feel sick. I vomit. I miss school,” she said. Her mother can only offer warm water for relief.

Such experiences are far from isolated. The 2018 National Hygiene Survey found that only one-third of Bangladeshi women knew about menstruation before their first period.

In low-income settlements, where access to education and healthcare is limited, the figure is likely even lower. Generations of silence and misinformation have left thousands of girls unprepared and unsupported.

Last year, 13-year-old Rina Akhter of Kalyanpur slum got her period unexpectedly just before class.

With no sanitary pads at home, she folded two sheets of newspaper and placed them in her underwear -- an unreliable improvisation her mother had once taught her out of necessity.

“I was too scared to ask to go to the toilet -- it’s filthy and there’s never any water,” she said. The blood soaked through her school uniform. Boys laughed.

“I froze. I just ran home crying.”

Her mother, Shahida Akter, a garment worker, repeated what she herself had once been told: “It’s natural. It happens to all girls.”

“But the truth is, I didn’t know how to help,” Shahida admitted. “No one ever helped me either.”

Raised in a village in Mymensingh, Shahida has never used a sanitary pad.

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