Regulating Menstruation in West Africa

Because women in Africa are particularly concerned with their ability to conceive and bear children, they pay close attention to their monthly period and take immediate action when there is a delay or other irregularity. They perceive blocked or delayed menses to be a sign that something is wrong and they take action with traditional medicines (herbs) to coax menstruation.

Though many of the herbs they use to regulate their periods may also be used as abortifacients in other scenarios, most of these women are not seeking abortions; rather, they are seeking to regulate their period so that they may be fertile in the future.

Anthropologist Elise Levin argues that women in Dabola, Guinea see their "menstrual regulation" in a third category that belongs neither to contraception nor to abortion. They are concerned to keep their physical health, fanka, which may deplete over a lifetime or with hardship. Menstruation is a good indicator of a woman's individual fanka, so women pay attention to the regularity, amount, quality and color of the flow (Levin 157-171). She emphasizes that regulating menstruation is a positive action, not seen as abortion but seen as a way to secure better health and fertility for the future.

Two scholars that study Bamana women in Mali make similar arguments. They suggest that in pro-natal societies, irregular menstruation is extremely stressful. These women see menstruation regulation as a way to eliminate fears of being unable to meet their childbearing obligations (Madhaven and Diarra, 172). In the Bamana society, infrequent menstruation may be attributed to witchcraft. Because women must protect their fertility against jealous co-wives, they guard their menstrual cloth jealously: an enemy might use it against them to cause infertility (176).

These three scholars argue that abortion is usually not the intent for these women to use emmenagogues (a drug or herbal product that is meant to induce mensturation), at least among women in Bamana society or in Dabola, Guinea. Among the Ekiti Yoruba women in southwestern Nigeria, on the other hand, anthropologist Elisha Renne suggests that women regulate their periods to "clean the womb" of both menstrual disorders (to promote fertility) and of pregnancies (Renne, 189).

Like women in Dabola, Yoruba women are concerned with the quality of their menstruation, as well as whether it comes or not. They attribute "black menstruation" to dirt in the womb, worms, abortion, or STDs; "white" or "watery" menstruation to STDs such as gonorrhea; and delayed onset of menstruation to virginity (a particularly thick hymen, which is blocking the blood). Delayed menses later in life suggests witchcraft for the Yoruba, as it does for the Bamana.

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