WaterAid’s Cecile Shrestha shared a very personal account of her recent trip back home to Nepal. Chhaupadi is a tradition in mid-Western and Western Nepal where women and girls are forced to sleep in outdoor sheds known as goths (exposed hut, without walls, sometimes without a roof) for 5-7 days during menstruation. More often than not, the sheds are far away from where the girls that sleep in them actually live. They can’t eat with their families, use the same water sources, or even touch the men in their families, lest they be responsible for ‘polluting’ them.

For many girls, Chhaupadi is an uncomfortable and scary experience. If it isn’t the snakes they encounter on the way to the jungle huts, it is male passer-bys who harass them, or in the worst cases, rape them. These dangers create physical fear. And it’s an experience that surely has a powerful impact on a young girl’s psyche and sense of self.

Credit: WaterAid/ Cecile Shrestha