The dinner table on Safari at Sable Mountain Lodge, Tanzania
Erin
This one is a post of a personal and somewhat gross nature, so fair warning here, if you’re squeamish or you get grossed out easily or plain don’t wanna hear about periods, skip this post.
As I was packing for Tanzania I was thinking “I should pack some pads and tampons. Just in case.” Tanzania was our honeymoon, so the possibility of… ahem… having my monthly friend for the duration was a bit lame, but oh well. As it is, my periods are ridiculously irregular, so I somewhat scoffed at the idea and packed only what I had available, which amounted to something ridiculous like 4 pads and a handful of tampons. “That will do me for the trip. I probably won’t even get it.” I thought.
Well. How wrong I was.
Around 3-4 days in to our two week trip I got the mother of all periods. Strangely it didn’t make me feel too disgusting cramps wise but my god was it heavy. (Yes, gross, I know, but I did warn you.) So I thought “Well, it can’t last much longer.” Going to the shop to get more supplies while we were on Zanzibar and near some vague civilisation would have been the clever thing to do, but I am not exactly clever sometimes, especially when it comes to my period. I usually misjudge it greatly (probably because it’s notoriously irregular and weird), so I never know what to expect from it. Did I go to the shop? Did I fuck.
We set off for the interior of Tanzania for our four day safari before heading back to Dar Es Salaam for our flight back to London and I was running horribly low on supplies. My own fault, I admit. I was thinking “They must surely have a little shop at the bush hotel we will stay in. Or something.”
We rocked up to this stunning bush resort run exclusively by men. Fuck. I kept an eye out for anything vaguely resembling a shop or even a vending machine in one of the public ladies bathrooms. There was literally fuck all. I tried to keep calm. I always have some kind of contingency plan. Well. Kind of. It usually consists of me making fake pads out of wads of toilet paper. A messy, but usually sufficient option. Did I mention all I had to wear as pants/trousers was white shorts? Oh yeah. That.
Shiiiiiiiiit.
I used my last pad and had already been wearing it for longer than I should. Again, gross, I know, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I was starting already to think of bundling up wads of toilet paper into my underwear and praying to the period gods that it wouldn’t leak onto my white shorts which would be a bit of a spectacle. I did it, but by hour three of wearing my makeshift pad and having to live with it through dinner, which was accompanied by a large tour group of older couples who were also staying at our safari place, I was desperate for something other than shitty toilet paper falling apart in my pants. What’s worse? Staining or bits of toilet paper falling out of your shorts… or triple worse - with blood on it! Argh. Add to that the fact that none of the ladies at dinner (and I do mean none) were of the age where monthly visitors were any longer a problem.
And add to that the fact that the resort manager who was around all the time was a serious babe.
Double shit. Hell. Triple shit.
We went back to our delicious room, the honeymoon suite (which we had been given by the resort manager when we turned up, him thinking it would be a cute idea, not even knowing it was our honeymoon). Hell, when I phoned to try to procure a last minute deal at this resort which we’d accidentally had to go to, I half expected we’d be put up in some hovel, perhaps under the kitchen. But nevermind, that’s not important. Pete fell asleep (we had both contracted something relatively nasty) and I was growing desperate for something other than fucking toilet paper in my panties. I started thinking of all the things I could use. Socks? Ew. Uhhh… other panties? Nooooo. Then it dawned on me - Pete always had this roll of gauze and cotton in the medical kit we cart with us everywhere we travel to. I rushed over and opened it and sure enough - a roll of gauze and some unopened cotton for more gnarly cuts. Well, this counted as a gnarly cut. Kind of.
He slept and I sat on the deck of our honeymoon tent with thunder rolling in and bouncing off the hills that surrounded us and made my own tampons, one of my life’s less glamorous moments. The even less glamorous moment was… well, inserting it. Hey ladies, I must say though, if you sit and knot gauze around a chunk of cotton though, it does work. And work pretty well. Just be prepared for a… well, rough ride.
Damn period gods and their hilarity though. The bloody thing (literally) didn’t leave for another three or four days. Hell, I think we were back in the UK before it finally pissed off properly (irregular and weird, see?). Luckily though when we got back to Dar Es Salaam my first port of call was one of the relatively sketchy markets that was essentially a hole in the wall. Nothing quite like a white girl asking a giant black man for pads out of a hole in the wall. It was the weirdest moment ever having to buy supplies. Thank fuck English is widely spoken... that's one game of charades I was not looking forward to playing.
So remember kids, when in doubt, keep pads handy - or better yet, do what I did and just invest in a mooncup. Suffice it to say, I’ll never have to pretend this is 1860 again.
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