When Hilda Alejandra Lara Perez, 21, was walking with the migrant caravan through southern Mexico, her period came a day early and caught her by surprise. “I didn’t have pads because I wasn’t expecting it,” she tells Teen Vogue. “Normally my period comes late, but this time it came early.” Luckily, another woman with the caravan was able to help her out and shared a spare.

Like the woman who helped Hilda, people fleeing their home countries in hope of seeking asylum in the U.S. as part of the migrant caravan were relatively prepared for menstruation, thanks in part to aid organizations donating supplies. “People gave us pads,” says Jennifer Vargas, 19, who kept a packet with her in her school-sized backpack, some of the only belongings she had with her.

When the first migrant caravan of people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador paused for nearly a week at the Ciudad Deportiva Magdalena Mixhuca in Mexico City, bulk packets of pads stacked two-feet high sat in the car park for people who needed them to take for free. Previously, in Veracruz, charities had provided pads and new pairs of women’s underwear at rest stops.

While supply was not such an issue for menstruators on the caravan, finding clean bathrooms and a private place to change were another story — a challenge displaced people often face. Dr. Marni Sommer, DrPH, who has worked with the International Rescue Committee to see how organizations can better manage menstrual hygiene in emergency situations, spoke to displaced women and girls in Myanmar and Lebanon for research. Afterwards, she wrote in The Conversation: “What we found was that the main difficulties women and girls faced went beyond a need for materials and included a lack of privacy and facilities to manage their menstruation.”

“For women and girls displaced by conflict or natural disaster,” she continued, ”managing their monthly periods can be challenging. […] Without the ability to properly manage their periods, women and girls are increasingly vulnerable in their day-to-day lives. It makes them more susceptible to gender-based and sexual violence as they seek appropriate materials and private places to wash, dry and dispose of used materials.”

At some shelters along the migrant caravan’s path, like those in Querétaro, Córdoba, and Guadalajara, there were community-style men’s and women’s bathrooms — think open showers, like the ones you find at public pools. But in other places, like the shelter in Mexico City and a sports center the migrants first stayed at in Tijuana, there weren’t even real facilities. To shower, some people would go out in the open and draw water from plastic water tanks. Using a bucket, they would splash water over their bodies in open sight, hoping the drainage would soak into the grass.

Hilda says even when she tried to find a private place to shower and go off to the side, there was always a lot of people. Jennifer says, “We have to shower in our underwear, and then sometimes the boys come in.” She sums it up with: “It’s complicated.”

Another young woman, Karla, 24, who declined to give her last name, tells Teen Vogue that possibly because of the walking, at least her period had only lasted three days. Hilda says the same.

But now the majority of the caravan has stopped in Tijuana, where they’re housed at El Barretal, an old concert venue, after the sports complex became flooded in the rain. According to Dr. Sommer, what people who menstruate in camps and shelters need is access to safe, private facilities where they can change, bathe, and wash their menstrual materials discreetly. Maria Inestroza of Pure Water for the World, a charity which helps with sanitation, water, and education in Honduras, agrees. “Women need space to change their pads. It’s an intimate moment,” she tells Teen Vogue.