CHAPTER 4: MENSTRUAL PREPARATION AS REPRODUCTIVE LABOUR-WORK
4.2 M ENSTRUAL PREPAREDNESS : FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH MENSTRUAL KNOWLEDGE
4.2.5 Menstrual literacy – the end of childhood?
The previous section has cast a light on preventing premarital sex is a way in which the childhood of Ndebele girls be preserved. In this section, I will now consider whether theoretical knowledge about the biological function of menstruation and the adult world of sex constitutes an end of childhood. Postman (1995) postulates that:
[…] in a literate world to be an adult implies having access to cultural secrets codified in unnatural symbols. In a literate world, children become adults. But in a nonliterate world there is no need to distinguish sharply between the child and the adult. For there are few secrets, and the culture and does not need to provide training in how to understand itself (1995:23).
Postman (1995) counterposes biological age as an index of adulthood by challenging us to consider literacy instead as an index of adulthood. In light of Postman’s assertion above, I begin to wonder this conceptualisation of adulthood make an interview participant like Gogo NaNambitha a perpetual child because she is illiterate? Literacy as an index of adulthood has its problems and pitfalls. A Postmanian reading of literacy as an index of adulthood infers that societies can be homogenously literate or homogenously illiterate and this is rarely universally the case. Besides this, literacy alone does not govern what is and what is not age-appropriate. Illiterate children may accidentally hear or see that which is not age-appropriate for them and even imitate or emulate it.
African cultures have a long, rich history of oral tradition – one that precedes colonisation and the introduction of the Latin alphabet to African society. Burke (2004) engages with the fact that ‘preliterate’
or predominantly oral cultures transmitted values through folklore. Folklore intimated through song and dance, storytelling and ritual “marked the important transition from childhood to adulthood” (Burke, 2004:823). As mentioned on page 11, Bhebhe (2018) noted the same about Ndebele oral tradition. Huchu (2020) in his short story, titled Egoli, texturises the significance of folklore in Zimbabwean rural life. It
gives a glimpse into childhood imagination – what Huchu describes is a youthful age in which it is
“impossible to discern fact from fiction” (2020:4). This suggests that unlike adults, children are not initially mature enough to intuit what is true and what is false from what they hear from the adults around them; nor from any misinformation that they may read. As such, we must also be mindful of the fact that literacy does not render one all-knowing in the ‘secrets of the world’. Maturity and adulthood are not solely realised in writing. For example, Gogo NaNambitha did not know her age but offered up her identity (ID) card as she knew it had her date of birth recorded on it even if she could not read what was written on it. Gogo NaNambitha challenges these dichotomies of illiteracy and childhood/literacy and adulthood because she is both an adult and illiterate.
Nevertheless, I do still think that literacy as an index of adulthood as an idea is worth exploring in the modern day Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe, the Guidance and Counselling classes and Science classes taught in secondary school47 are an introduction to menstrual literacies. Khanyi says that she learned about menstruation in Guidance and Counselling class, where she was taught that “the body is God’s temple” and so must not be violated by boys and allowing them to “touch” you. Khanyi reveals that menstrual literacy in this case is imbued by religious value transmission. At the time of my fieldwork, Denise had also recently learned about menstruation in her Guidance and Counselling class48. Denise says she was taught about breast development in Form 1 Science class49. She adds, however, that they never discussed menstruation in her first form Science classes. Denise would have been in first form in 2016. It is worth noting that a year later, the 2017 new Curriculum Framework introduced a ‘safe sex’ component to Guidance and Counselling classes and that menstruation is now also covered in the adolescent CSE manual of the curriculum. True to the curriculum change, Denise explains that she went on to learn about puberty and menstruation in Guidance and Counselling just a few weeks before her interview in July 2019. She attributes her understanding of the biological process of puberty and the physiology of menstruation to these Guidance and Counselling classes. Karen too reveals in her interview that she did not understand the biological purpose of menstruation until that class. Since being taught about menstruation in their Guidance and Counselling class, Khanyi, Denise and Karen50 girls are now aware that menstruation means that they are now reproductively capable.
47 Denise, Khanyi, Karen and Thandeka all mention this (cf. page 111)
48 i.e., Denise was 16 years old at the time of the interview and had recently learned about menstruation in school that same year (that she was aged turned 16).
49 the official school age of a first former is 13 years, cf. Fig. 5, page 23
50 The girls are peers and so had learned about menstruation in this class at the same time.
Their peer, S’tha, also gives us a glimpse into the menstrual literacy she gained in Science class, wherein she learned how to track her menstrual cycle (McMahon et al., 2011). S’tha says that she learned in Science that “you can count 21 days after 5 days of menstruation” before your next period. S’tha’s menstrual literacy is blighted by only slight miscalculations. This slight inaccuracy corresponds with the studies of Abioye- Kuteyi (2000) and Dhingra et al. (2009) who found that in Nigeria and India respectively, girls often have inaccurate information about menstruation (Abioye-Kuteyi, 2000; Dhingra et al., 2009). It may also be a case of misremembering rather than misunderstanding. S’tha may also be referring to the length of her own menstrual cycle which may be 26 days long. Menstrual tracking is a menstrual literacy that enables a girl to be ‘mindful’ (Prendergast, 2000) from one cycle to the next in order to avoid being caught unawares and without any MHMMMs. Complementarily, Karen understands menstruation as the “washing out of [unfertilised] eggs” from Science class. She also knows that a fertilised egg can become a “zygote”. Her menstrual literacy consists of a vast vernacular of reproduction in isiNdebele, which she is able to articulate using scientific lexicon in English. This kind of menstrual literacy can perhaps be understood as a form of hermeneutical justice (Fricker, 2007) as she has the vocabulary to articulate these biological processes, relating to menstruation and reproduction. Karen has an accurate grasp of the physiology of menstruation (Sinden et al., 2015) and she even declares that “You must not sleep with a boy. You can easily fall pregnant [if] you do”. Thandeka (aged 17) was at home when she had started menstruating at the age of 16. She says that she knew about it because she had been taught about it in school, in both Science class and Guidance and Counselling classes.
As a result of their Guidance and Counselling classes and Science classes, Thandeka, S’tha, Karen, Khanyi, and Denise are all cognisant that sexual intercourse can bring with it procreation – whether intended or not.
The girls gain knowledge on the biology of menstruation in Science class. This is accompanied by a grounding in abstaining from sex in both Guidance and Counselling class and the menstruation-related teachings they receive from female relatives at home. This new literacy in menstruation matters, reproduction, and sex brings me to wonder if this accumulative knowing marks the end of their girlhood;
their childhood?
In my interview with her, Gogo MaMoyo (aged 72) shone alight on menstruation and the menstrual-related knowledge gained thereafter as an end to childhood innocence. She specifically talks about ‘knowing’ as the end of childhood when she says, “I started menstruating late. I was 20 and had finished my teacher training before knowing anything.” When I prompted as to what she did not ‘know’ at this age, she explains that she had not yet “known a man”. She adds that by this time, “My mother and grandmother were worried that I had not yet become a woman and therefore could not marry. They also worried that I could not have
children [yet].” Gogo MaMoyo was married not long after she began menstruating. She was 20 years old when reached menarche and was married at the age of 22 years. We are reminded in Gogo MaMoyo’s narrative that the ability to reproduce, signified by ménarche, marks the end of childhood. Earlier I referred to the double burdened ‘work of knowing’ (cf. page 4)51, which is generally invisible but rendered visible in Gogo MaMoyo’s menstrual narrative. The idea of not synonymising childhood with biological age is not a novel one. Rousseau articulated it in 1762 when he argued that “Childhood and age have too little in common for the formation of a really firm affection” (1915:42). Kamwendo Naphambo (2021) concurs. In her monograph, she found that age (alone) is not a significant marker of maturity among Malawian women.52 In thus study it is evident from Gogo MaMoyo’s narrative that even though she is a qualified teacher and has knowledge in her field – she is still seen as a child (by her mother and grandmother). In their view, until ménarche a Ndebele girl is a child. As such, I put forward ménarche (menstruation)53, literacy (‘knowing’) and maternity (childbearing) as complementary ways of indexing of adolescence and adulthood in this study.
Just as maternity can be an index of adulthood, conversely, nulliparity is an index of childhood. She is also a child in their eyes and her own eyes because does not have the adult ‘knowing’ of a man by the way of sexual intercourse – she is still intombazana and not intombi (nto). Gogo MaMoyo’s narrative reveals two realms of knowing: (i) public and professional knowing (as a teacher) and (ii) private knowing (of intimate topics and experience). It shows how knowing is itself a form of reproductive labour-work that the ‘knower’
invests in. Both labour and work can be measured in action, but work is remunerated while labour is typically gratuitous (Tamale, 2005). Personal knowledge (labour) can be translated into professional remunerable work (i.e., teaching as we see with Gogo MaMoyo) and measured in competencies and literacies (e.g., a teacher training certificate). This demonstrates the permeability of the labour-work and public-private boundaries. Drawing on Fricker (2007) who emphasises gravity of knowing, I argue that
51 Fricker too alludes to ‘knowing’ it in her theorisation of hermeneutical injustice as mentioned page 4.
52 See Ncube (1987) on how until the Legal Age of Majority Act was passed in 1982 were grown biological adults but legal minors under African customary law as they were mog able to own property, entering into contracts without male consent.
53 I recognise, however, that ménarche is biological marker of (more so than using chronological or biological age) it is meaningful in particular social contexts, like Zimbabwe. Though biological age is inevitably social age, different biological markers are used in different societies and for different purposes. For example, among the Ndebele, ménarche (besides marking the body biologically more mature) signals the need to prime girls for reproductive success by beginning collective community-based reproductive labour-work of preventing early unintended pregnancy and single motherhood.
knowing is empowering because it enables us to understand and articulate experiences, which helps us describe and explain phenomenon.
I contrast Gogo MaMoyo with Gogo NaNambitha. Gogo NaNambitha remarks self-deprecatingly that, “I am uneducated, so I do not know my age now or how old I was when I first started menstruating or when I first got married”. She is still knowledgeable, however. She has ‘known’ a man, and while she does not know the exact year, she reached ménarche; married; or had her first child she is still able to delineate these with paperwork such as her ID card and her first-born son’s birth certificate. Gogo NaNambitha also speaks of how she would track her period using the lunar cycle. Time, and with it the transition from childhood and adulthood, pre-dates the Greco-Roman calendar. Societies measure time, and in turn adulthood, in different ways, for example by the waxing and waning of the moon or the changing of seasons. Through Gogo NaNambitha’s narrative we see that the modern and traditional are not such distinct categories as we would like to imagine. On one hand, Gogo NaNambitha used the ‘synodic cycle’ (Steele & Allen, 2004) to track her menstrual cycle through her life. Yet on the other hand, she is still able use modern alphanumeric bureaucratic documentation to discern time. Though Gogo NaNambitha is in many ways a traditional rural woman who was not allowed to attend school by her father, her insights make it possible to reclaim rural African women in a narrative of knowing and knowledge (re)production that they have been excluded from for centuries.