By Lornet Turnbull
Special To The Medium
When LueRachelle Brim-Atkins first envisioned a project that would make it possible for young girls in Limbe, Cameroon to continue going to school uninterrupted, she never imagined she’d end up having to build a water well at their school, too.
It was a reality check for Brim-Atkins and fellow members of the Seattle-Limbe Sister City Association, as they try to address a critical need in the world while making important cultural links here at home.
In January 2016, Brim-Atkins, who serves as president of the organization, and a team of volunteers flew to the Central African country to deliver 1,200 feminine care kits that they had made.
Their work was in response to a disturbing concern, not just in Cameroon but in countries around the world, that many young women miss school during their menstrual cycles because they lack access to or can’t afford feminine care products.
When the delegation returned in December to distribute 1,600 more kits, they wanted to know if the products they had delivered earlier in the year had helped the girls as intended. They were taken aback by what they learned.
The kits include, among other things, reusable flannel pads and travel-size bars of soap. The girls are instructed to use the soap to pre-wash the pads at school when on their monthly cycles and then place them in small zip lock plastic bags to take home for a more thorough washing.
But the Limbe girls told the Seattle team that their high school has no running water. As a result, they had been unable to use the kits at school as intended.
“So, one project unfolded into another,” Brim-Atkins said, perplexed as to why no one at the school had disclosed the lack of water during the first trip. “And we decided to help build a water well at the school.”
Creating Connections
Limbe is an Atlantic port city of 84,000 people, famous for its tea and agriculture production and geographically divided between French and English-speaking regions.
It is one of Seattle’s 21 sister cities and one of two on the African continent. Mombasa, Kenya is the other.
The association formed the Seattle Limbe Sewing Circle in partnership with Brim-Atkins’ church, First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Seattle, to produce the kits for young girls not just in Limbe, but across Cameroon.
Circle volunteers use sewing machines to make the absorbent flannel pads. They also sew the leak-proof shields that the pads are placed into for use. Eight of the pads are included in a kit, two shields, two pairs of underwear, a washcloth, soap, zip lock bags and a draw-string bag to carry them all in. The kits, developed by the Bellingham-based international nonprofit, Days for Girls, can last a girl up to three years.
But this project, said Brim-Atkins, an organization and management development consultant, is really the byproduct of a bigger goal. At a time when the nation is fractured along so many lines, the sewing circle is a way to help build bridges across racial, political, religious and cultural divides – not just in Cameroon but here at home, as well.
The association has formed partnerships with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Monroe, Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle and other Christian churches in the region, and over the last two years has brought together 200 volunteers of many different backgrounds. The gatherings of men and women of all ages alternate between the three sites to assemble the kits and learn about one another.
“Our primary purpose is to build cross-cultural community,” Brim-Atkins said. “We are seen as (citizen) diplomats who go (to Limbe) with our culture to interact with theirs,” she said.
“But I believe it makes no sense to go all the way to Africa to build cross-cultural community if we haven’t done that here at home.”
Delbert Richardson, a member of the sister city board, said making these kinds of connections is crucial for breaking down the walls that separate us.
“There’s a strong need for us all to start the process of healing,” Richardson said. “The journey to Africa allows us to do the hard work of self-discovery and assists us in replicating at home what we are doing abroad.”
Addressing A Need
Brim-Atkins first became aware of this problem for young women during a trip with a separate group to a rural Kenyan village. Members of the organization had asked young girls there what kind of help they needed.
The girls spoke of having to miss classes when they couldn’t afford to buy feminine care products and about how some girls would fall behind in school. Some even became discouraged and dropped out of school.
Back in Seattle, Brim-Atkins had begun looking for alternatives to the bulky commercially made feminine pads, when a friend directed her to an article about Days for Girls.
A representative from the organization, which was formed in 2008, came out to train the Seattle-Limbe group on how to make the feminine products. They made a five-year commitment to the project, beginning in 2015 and regularly raise money to buy the supplies they need.
The connections being made through the sewing circle are already generating rewards, in unexpected ways.
Because of the partnership with Beth Shalom, for example, a congregant there used his contacts within the airline industry to cover shipping costs for the kits in December, Brim-Atkins said.
Paying It Forward
Not only are the volunteers creating important bonds here at home, but on these trips they are training the women in Cameroon to make the feminine products. Those women, in turn, train others. And so on.
On the December trip, for example, at a YWCA center in Cameroon’s French speaking capital city of Yaoundé, the Seattle delegation had planned to teach six women how to make the kits.
But when Brim-Atkins and her team arrived at the center, there were 35 women eagerly waiting – Christian and Muslim women and women, she assumed, of no faith at all.
On that trip, Brim-Atkins said, “We distributed kits to Muslim schools, Christian schools and public schools because we are real clear we are not taking sides with anybody.
“Every girl has a period. We don’t care what she looks like, what language she speaks or how she approaches God,” she said.
Back in Limbe, the girls explained to the Seattle group that even though they were unable to use the products effectively at school because they have no running water, having the kits helped their parents save money because they didn’t have to buy the commercially made products, or at least not as many.
Now, Brim-Atkins is working with the Rotary Club in a nearby city to facilitate construction of the well at their school, which she hopes will be complete by the time they visit early next year.
