About 9 months ago, we opened up about our experience with Always pads. Always Kenya organised a series of meetings with Kenyan women as a response to #MyAlwaysExperience.

This is a thread on what transpired during the Friday meeting.

I received an invitation on Monday for a round table dialogue from Always Kenya titled "A conversation with Kenyan women". They explained that they have been reaching out to Kenyan women online as a response to #MyAlwaysExperience

I said okay, why not?
I agreed to the meeting because; I was curious and even though I stopped using Always, it was an opportunity to tell them to their face that their pads made us suffer and that we deserve quality pads.

The meeting began with a short video about what Always is about, then we got to the main agenda and the screen was filled with #MyAlwaysExperience tweets.

Seeing those tweets reminded me, "let no one ever tell you that speaking out online is a waste of time"

The dialogue was divided into three;

1. Always doesn't care.
2. Substandard pads are being sold in Kenya
3. The response to #MyAlwaysExperience was bad

1. Always doesn't care...

Some women in the room said that they didn't have a problem with the pad which was okay but that doesn't change the fact that we had horrible experiences, we haven't itched or burnt since we changed from Always. The pads were bad

There was a doctor in the audience who mentioned that this was an opportunity to do a public reproductive healthcare education on infections, what is a normal period and what isn't normal

It is true that we need to talk about Reproductive healthcare. However, this line of conversation seems to blame Kenyan women for their experience instead of taking responsibility for bad pads, yet many of us stopped burning and itching AFTER moving to other brands.

Always launched/plans to launch another product.

We asked, does this launch acknowledge that the pads we complained about are defective? The response was that launching a new product doesn't mean that the other product is/was defective.

Launching a new product as a response to #MyAlwaysExperience without;
1. A public apology to Kenyan women
2. Recalling the product we complained about,

Tells me that we still aren't being listened to and our complaints haven't been acknowledged.

2. There are substandard products in Kenya.

Always maintains there is no difference in quality, just packaging and the fact that some brands were perfumed. Samples from Kenya, UK, USA Turkey were put on a table and we were invited to feel the texture difference

I personally don't believe that our Kenyan pads are the same as other brands. People who have had the privilege of using brands from elsewhere confirmed that they are indeed different....

3. The response to #MyAlwaysExperience was bad.
This they admitted.

To be honest though, the response we need is; recall the bad pads and give us good quality pads.

In conclusion, I feel like we were being told, "the problem could really be you..."

We deserve quality pads.

Article 46 of the Constitution spells out our right to quality products that protect our health, safety and economic interests.