Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Kabones for all!

A few weeks ago, I tagged along with my NGO worker friends to go on a "Community Led Total Sanitation" certification day. My friends work for a project called RANOHP which works on issues relating to hygiene and sanitation, latrines, hand washing, and clean water. A group of 7 of us (health workers, the head of the district, the adjoint mayor, myself and some other people who I don't know who or why they were there) hiked out to two villages. 

We went out to a small village, where supposedly, everyone uses latrines. We had a few items on the agenda. First, we visited the area where the village used to go to the bathroom before they built latrines. The group of 7 used their high tech investigative skills to look for evidence of human shit....It was pretty funny seeing the head of the district turning over rocks and leaves looking and smelling around for human shit....but they didn't find any! Then we went to look at all the new latrines they built, and then the head of the district held "court." Or at least that's what it seemed like to me. The head of the district called people up, one by one, and asked them about their bathroom habits, where they went to the bathroom, which latrine their family used, etc. etc. etc.

Showing off her new latrine.
A super clean village!
Finally after being somewhat convinced that everyone used latrines, we awarded a certificate and plaque to the village. We hiked to a few other villages and did the same thing. And while its great that these villages all use latrines, there are still many (mine included) where people go to the bathroom wherever they feel like it....including outside my door. Little by little...

Looking for human waste....
These people use latrines. Yay





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