World Toilet Day

I'm a day late with this post, but no joke- November 19 is World Toilet Day! I was notified of this from my friends at Water Partners: "We celebrate World Toilet Day and the incredible value of the can. Call it what you will the pot, the loo, the throne, the latrine, the water closet, the bog [or here in Kenya, the choo]; it's one of the most important inventions in history. Why recognize World Toilet Day? Because the majority of illness in the world is caused by fecal matter. Because 2.5 billion people, 42 percent of the world's population, don't have access to proper sanitation. Because 1.2 billion people have no toilet, no hole in the ground, no pit latrine, nothing. And because 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhea alone 4,900 deaths each day."

These staggering statistics are part of my motivation for being here in Kenya. In the U.S. it sounds silly to celebrate our toilets; we flush and don't give it another thought. But here in Kuria, Kenya, a couple people have ventilated pit latrines, some have a hole in the ground and many have nothing at all. No toilets mean that feces ends up in drinking water and on dinner plates, and adults and children end up with nasty illnesses like typhoid, amoebiasis and diarrhea. Of the 40 drinking water collection points (springs and streams) I've visited here, I've gotten reports of people getting sick from drinking the water at 70% of those locations. 70%!

In the U.S. we leave it up to wastewater treatment plant to deal with our flushes and the water treatment plant clean our drinking water for us, but here these matters have to be dealt with at the household level. Good hygiene and knowledge about safe drinking water can be a matter of life and death...

I've learned that simple practices like washing hands with soap and water at critical times and boiling drinking water can dramatically reduce diseases. Unicef says using soap to wash hands, particularly after contact with excreta, can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40% and respiratory infections by 30%. Can you believe that?

Stats like that get me excited and give me hope. I'm delighted to report that today we completed a 3-day training for 30 water/sanitation representatives, who are now community experts! They're now fully equipped and charged to train their families and neighbors in basic hygiene and household water treatment practices, like boiling water, which can eliminate all those microorganisms that are making them sick. I trained up Lucas and he taught each class using colorful posters developed by the Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology. The do great work and provide water/sanitation training aids free of charge! We were even able to get the posters with Kiswahili text, which the reps really appreciated. I included the English language version of a couple of my favorites for you.

The reps ate the posters up. At one point, they asked me "Was that picture taken in Kuria? All of the things shown happen here. Which tribe is that?" That was a huge compliment, and it made me laugh, because the posters show cartoons not photographs. Another fun question: "Who is that guy (the water droplet guy with the thumbs down)?" Another rep responded, "He is the grandfather. He is stopping the contamination." Then next day I drew a picture of "babu maji" (water grandfather) on the chalkboard with a welcome message.

Empowerment is loads of fun. The reps were eager to learn and are excited to pass on their knowledge. I've already heard stories of reps teaching their children what they learned in class. After the reps give their families and their Nuru groups the water/sanitation training, about 1,800 people will be reached with these disease-preventing, life-saving messages. Now that's what I call an appropriate World Toilet Day celebration!