Traveling in a caravan is the ideal summer plan: the sensation of freedom, being able to sleep anywhere (and anytime), discovering new landscapes, and losing the notion of time… Camper voyages are the greatest until you bleed. A lot.
Contrary to what we have seen in movies, or rather, what we’ve listened to in conversations between menstruators, whenever I get my period I feel emotionally empowered. I relate it to the renewal of blood in my uterus, like a caged bird being set free. Natural bleeding makes me feel powerful. When I’m menstruating I’m more creative, have more energy, and feel more sexually active. So in a sense, getting my period while roving in around shouldn’t have been a problem. But for me, it kinda was.
In this article, I explain my experience as a menstruator traveling abroad, and I will give you tips for sustainable and efficient period management when resources are in shortage.
It was day three of the trip. We were on the Belgian coast, in Zeeland, in a camper park. I had been a couple of days with ovary pain – already advertising that my endometrium was gonna discharge. Because I had suspected my period was arriving, instead of sleeping naked as I usually do in summer, this time I kept my panties all night long. This saved our bed sheets but as soon as I took them off, the ‘menstru smell’ spread all over the van. Oddly, because it never does, this time it smelled strongly. So the first thing I did: changed my clothes and went straight to the camping shower. I was lucky to have been on a campsite with available hot water, otherwise, I would have had to use the portable shower –with old and cold water, which I definitely despise even during summertime.
For the past three to four years, I’ve been using clothing pads to manage my menstruation. They are useful because they have more absorption capacity than normal plastic-made pads, and of course, they are more sustainable because they are waste-free. Besides, this way I avoid putting anything inside my vagina, which terribly annoys me while menstruating, and sometimes, it boosts my menstrual pain. However, clothing pads have an inconvenience: they need to be cleaned to be able to reuse them, and this requires a considerable amount of water. And when you are traveling in a van, water is a precious thing. Because we were staying at a campsite, I could take profit from the shower to clean a pair of used cloth pads with shampoo.
After a couple of days in Domburg’s campsite (in the area of Zeeland, Belgium) we decided to go back to the interior of the country because our next destination was in the Alps, in France. We first halt in the center of Antwerp, because we’d been told it was a nice city to visit, and after my six-month exchange program in Leuven –next to Brussels–, I wanted to stop by. This time, we were sleeping in the streets and there was no shower or toilet nearby available. Luckily enough, I have eight cloth pads so I could still manage my period with pads instead of needing to use the menstrual cup. In the middle of Antwerp, I encountered two main concerns: firstly, I couldn’t clean my pads anymore, because of the lack to access to current water. And secondly: the used pads inside the van smelled strong.
Because cloth pads have click-buttons to attach them to the panties, I could fold them into little pocket-like shapes and keep them inside a plastic bag. This prevented the smell to spread further across the van but made it harder to clean after a couple of days with dry blood. My period had never smelled as strong, so for the first time, I felt a certain embarrassment to be in that situation with my boyfriend in the van. But because he is a well-trained feminist (and also a normal-functional human being) he didn’t care at all about the smell, or my clean panties hanging on the inside walls of the caravan, which made things way smoother. I related the strong smell to alcohol drinking (I couldn’t avoid cold beers in Belgium, the ‘beerland’) and bad alimentation, due to our semi-precarious van-living. The smell is not something ‘fixable’ at the moment, but it is preventable if sustainable recollection methods are used and a proper food intake habit is followed.
My period lasted almost two weeks, and intense ovary pain and humor changes came with it. After Antwerp, we moved to Liège, also in Belgium, to my boyfriend’s relative’s house. This time we were lucky enough to have at our reach a proper shower, food, and shelter, so no need for the pads or us to stay in the van. We slept there one night, but that was enough for me to clean all my used pads and for both of us to finally get proper rest.
Menstruating in the run was quite a challenge, but also a period-schooling adventure. Between the things I learned about menstruating in a van, here are some of the highlight lessons, for if you find yourself in the same or similar situation:
1. Say bye to plastics
Avoid using plastic recollection methods like plastic pads or tampons. They will create trash, and especially when sleeping in nature, there is no way to throw them away but to keep them inside the van (or tent) until you find a recyclable bin. Instead, I recommend using clothing pads, as you can re-use them, and they are waste-free. Also, you can use the menstrual cup or the menstrual panties. I only used the menstrual cup once during this trip, when we went to the beach. And luckily enough, I could find a bathroom with a private sink to empty the blood in it and clean the cup after its use.
2. Odor-free and natural materials
Vans are small closed spaces, so any source of smell (either a fart, rooting stored food, or in this case, menstrual blood) will noticeably spread across. To avoid having a strong period smell, I recommend using charcoal reusable menstrual pads, as this material absorbs better the smell than cotton or synthetic fabrics. Detouring plastics as menstruation recollection products will also help at that task and, to the possible extent, get a proper alimentation and avoid drinking and smoking.
3. Menstrual education to fight the stigma
In case of choosing the cup as your player, I recommend having at your reach a mini-camping stove. This way you can boil water to clean the cup before and after your period. Additionally, watch out for public bathrooms. Most of the time, they have shared sinks, and people are not okay seeing others’ menstrual blood. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to empty your cup but the bathroom sinks are shared, then you’ll have two options: either don’t give a f**k about other’s reaction and do it anyway; or you’ll find yourself having to do it in a sneaky non-comfortable way, at night hours or directly outside the bathroom with a bottle of water. The solution to this crossroad passes through menstrual education to erase its stigma.
4. Beware of your resources
In case you find yourself without any of those sustainable methods (clothing pads or menstrual cups), perhaps using menstrual panties is your way to go. These work similarly to clothing pads, but the amount of water required to clean them is bigger. If you are traveling in a caravan and you need to clean (either clothing pads, menstrual panties, or dishes) I recommend packing a clothing soap bar and a couple of liters of tap water, stored separately from potable water. Because blood stains go away better with cold than with hot water, this way you will be able to clean them easily without needing access to a bathroom facility.
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