KT village project pictures

This is the village we call "KT" (May 2013)

Here are some pictures from the 2013 work in KT village.  One of the strengths of our project is training and capacity building.  We have a variety of training topics prepared, but we do not start or even offer them until the community realizes in problem analysis that they would benefit from some form of learning.  Below are pictures of men's and women's hygiene health training.

Below are pictures of latrine construction.  KT village was the big success for latrines, because of all the extra work that this community put into them.  I decided not to show pictures of the insides of their latrines!

And here are some of the new latrine owners.

If you are interested in reading more about the latrines project in KT, click here

Latrine monitoring in K.T.

 Today I went to one of the project villages to look at the latrines being built.  It was the typical trip with lots of little things that I could mention, but usually don't because that requires more energy than I usually have in the evenings.  You're in luck because I just got back from a break and feel motivated to "take you along" on this village trip by sharing my observations of the day:

Every trip is a small adventure.  Before leaving town my driver and I made some calls to check security.  There was fighting overnight near the airport, so we took the rough road instead of the main.  A few kilometers down that road our Toyota Hilux truck started to wobble like a penguin.  I told the driver to let me drive so he could observe and try to figure out what it was.  So there’s the driver running beside me watching the front wheels.  It worked, he noticed the part of the suspension that was moving wildly from a missing bolt, and we limped it back to town to get said bolt.  20 minutes later we’re back on the road.

Our male staff are enthused that the second round of 20 latrines has been progressing much faster than the first 20.  The first took 2 months to complete, but in just 2 weeks many of the second round were well underway.  Makes sense, now that their harvest is over, they have time to do our physical projects.

Lunch was delicious salad, carmelized squash in sour cream, and rice with chickpeas (a feast to welcome me back from my trip to Am-ree-ka).  There was even pudding.  Wow, they hardly ever make pudding in the village.

Out we went on the walking tour of 30+ latrines.  The village is big, about a mile long and a quarter mile uphill in width.  The entire place is on a hillside so strewn with avalanched rocks you wouldn’t believe that over 75 families live there, but they do.  We walk up and down the hill to zigzag to all the homes with latrines.  I see a number of positive surprises along the way, including the number of latrines that had been ‘boosted’ into commode-style latrines by the homeowners.  I say ‘boosted’, because we do not include commode fixtures or extra plumbing with our program, our latrines are more basic slab and pit latrines.  It’s amazing to see that over 50% of the people in this village have gone out to buy themselves commode fixtures and piping to connect to a remote pit.  Months ago when I first heard about this idea I was skeptical because I feared there would be technical issues and it would come back at us.  Quickly I saw that lots of people were eager for commodes, because a number of men had seen them and worked on them in a neighboring country.  Now I can’t help but stand back and think this is excellent, because a commode is much better than the standard slab at controlling flies and smell, and the porcelain white fixture is a beautiful thing to see in a dusty village.

I’m humbled to see that some villagers have taken our program so serious that they have prioritized building their latrine over finishing their home.  Many new homes are being built in this village; people are constantly moving here from overpopulated mountain villages, and starting over here.  One man struggled to dig a 5-meter pit through dense rock, then bought 12 meters of 4” pvc pipe to drain the commode he installed in his house, to the pit down the hill outside.  He was so proud, and the latrine and wash space was truly well done by his own handiwork.  It was only as I left that I noticed his wife rocking an infant in a rickety wood cradle, in a room with no floor covering or windows.

Next stop is a house that looks just as simple and poor as the rest, but his latrine is visibly different; the interior of this latrine has been plastered and whitewashed!  This was not the only latrine that had been fancied up, there are several that have plastered walls and handwashing points with soap.  Some have even been turned into a latrine/washroom by enlarging the floor space, cementing the walls to knee-high, and installing a floor drain.  Then my mind was officially blown when I saw a toothbrush and toothpaste sitting on nails, on the wall of one washroom/latrine.  That’s the first time in 6 years that I’ve seen a toothbrush in a local home here, and it was out here in a poor dusty village. 

On we go, one latrine after another.  Some are average, but most look really good.  Then we find one with a green door and window frames.  Awesome

Later there is a curious latrine that does not have a roof yet, but the hole in the slab is covered.  This tells me that the family has put the latrine right to work, and applied what they learned in the training about keeping the slab covered.  Nevermind there’s no roof yet, there’s no rain this month.

Most of the latrines have covers on the slabs, which is great because this is something the project didn’t supply; they had to get their own.  One family used what looked like the cover for truck air cleaner.  Whatever works!

To be honest not all the latrines were up to snuff.  Several were made with the technical suggestions of a certain man who swore he was a well-trained engineer.  Unfortunately he suggested they overlap their 2-piece slanted tin roof the wrong way, and when the rain comes they will be getting dripped on when they go to their latrine.  I pointed this out, but as I suspected, they all chose the “we’ll wait and see” response.  That’s fine, it’s their latrine, made with their own hands, so if it needs to be fixed, I’m pretty sure they’ll do it. 

One of the big surprises of the day was learning that my lead staff took the liberty to let every man build his own latrine, and be paid the mason’s wage for that.  The plan had been that 3 masons would be contracted to build the more technical parts of the latrine, together with trainees at each house that would learn the construction techniques.  At first I was disappointed with my staff leader and planned to make an issue of how his choice would make the community more dependent, but then I decided to first go and see the result of his leadership.  We toured on a great day, because a number of men were literally putting the finishing touches on their latrines.  I saw the pride and satisfaction on their faces, and I heard their appreciation of our project finally making it possible for them to “quit being lazy” (the words of one man) and take care of their sanitation need.  I was reminded of two points I read recently in a book titled “Poor Economics”.  The authors of this book argue that development needs to be tested and researched according to how each unique people group responds to different types of support or assistance.  They suggest that a handout or incentive is not always a bad thing; perhaps the handout is what convinces people to act right away.  This might cause concern that they acted because of the incentive, or that they would get used to handouts.  On this point, however, the authors counter that perhaps it’s not handouts they get used to, perhaps they rather get used to latrines, and never allow themselves to go back to life without them. 

I was still thinking about these points when my staff started to ask me how we will proceed with the rest of the community.  That is the question isn’t it?  I mean, no matter what we have done, where is it going from here, and will we be able to affect change in sanitation outside of the area where we give away materials and pay builders?  My staff must get tired of hearing these types of questions from me.

By the end of the week I estimate 35-40 latrines will be done in this village.  The goal for the year is 75 total, and then we will do another round of hygiene training over the winter for the 50 new families (told you the village is growing fast) before we do any assistance with their latrines next year.  What we will probably do between this year and next is transition to a new phase in which we no longer pay for any labor on latrines, we only supply materials not found in the village.  Most of my staff think this will be a mistake because people will not tolerate being treated differently.  My staff leader, however, agrees with me, that once there is a critical mass of 75 latrine-using families in a village, the social pressure will be on the other 50 to get theirs done, and they will be more inclined to do the labor for free in order to catch up with the rest of the community.  I wouldn’t be so sure of this, except that the commodes, white-washed walls, and the toothbrush tell me that this community has “got” the message on hygiene and sanitation, and they should be able to handle the continuation of the latrine project as the outside organization takes steps back and lets them do it.

We will see!  Ask me later about this village that we call K.T.!

Let’s take a close look at… pooping.

 Tomorrow our project begins a week of training on a program called Community-Led Total Sanitation.  Appropriately named, this program deals with sanitation, but it deals with it different from most of the NGOs’ projects here. 

The typical program enters a village, gives materials or cash or both, and tells people to build latrines.  The project walks away happy that they can report to their donor that they have built X latrines (and thus renew their grant next year), and the villagers are happy that they have been given or even paid to make a small cement-floored building.  You would be surprised to hear the variety of creative uses villagers have made of their new latrines.  Some cover the toilet hole and raise chickens in them.  Others find they make great storage for hay or other goods that need to stay dry.  One man found his latrine just big enough to park his motorcycle in.  The most creative: sheep, crammed into a latrine.  Sure they could use them for their toileting duties, but some would reason that this will only make the place stink, and who would want to do that?!  Much better, they say, to relieve oneself in the field, under the cool night air and the starry sky (sounds nice doesn’t it?). 

Sanitation projects are not easy, because it takes much more than a cement pooping pad to get people to change the toileting habits they have held all their lives.  You might be thinking to yourself, “they need to be trained in the benefits of using a latrine.”  You are correct, but this type of training is extremely difficult, because people are often glad to verbally agree that their toileting practices need correction (because the more wealthy trainer tells them this), but unwilling to actually change (because, well, there’s a lot of reasons they may not change, more on that later).

Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an approach to sanitation that puts all the emphasis on advocacy.  To make that clear, the approach also pulls away all the handouts and stipends of materials for building a latrine.  The theory is: only a family/community motivated enough to invest and build their own latrine, will actually use a latrine. 

How does CLTS motivate people in such a way?  Simple, it shocks them, and it shames them, and it leaves the solutions up to them.  Examples?  The project staff ask the villagers to take them on a tour of the village.  When they see traces of open defecation they might ask the villagers, “how are you going to avoid eating that?”  They then explain the various ways that their own feces may end up back in their mouth: animals eating it and later being handled by food preparers, children running through it and bringing it into the house, flies being in it and then landing on their food.  This discussion is made blunt on purpose, to let communities know what kind of problem they’re dealing with. 

It gets worse.  Ready for this?  I have already heard that there is a “fly talk” that goes quite well in this part of the world.  The trainer asks the villagers for a cup of tea.  They dip a single piece of hair in the tea, then asks if anyone will drink the tea.  This seems to gross people out, so they all decline.  The trainer then asks how many legs a fly has, and explains that when a fly has been on feces, and then lands on their food, it is bringing 6 times the amount of feces to their food, as compared to that one piece of hair they were scared of.

Ready for worse yet?  In most places, there are other disgusting stories of the effects of poor sanitation, and the trainers that come in to a village look and listen for such stories, and then make a big public discussion of them.  The best stories I’ve heard:

-One trainer spots a chicken eating poop, and asks what the eggs have tasted like recently.

-Often trainers are taken as doctors, and people bring their sick to them.  On occasion a child will be brought with a parasite worm coming out of its nose or eye.  The trainer again makes the connection between worms and parasites of feces on the ground, and that thing they see coming out of the child’s face, in other words- how did that get there?

-In one place we heard about, a whole village complained of worms, and so a project gave worm medicine to everyone the same day.  In this place, the practice was to toilet on top of a clean rock.  When the urge to relieve one’s bowels hit the whole community at once, they covered a good portion of the fields around their village with their poo.  What happened next turned the whole village upside-down- a flock of game birds (that they often hunted and ate) flew in and descended on the fields, devouring the freshly laid worms.  Seeing this, many in the community were now vomiting.

In each of these places, the communities committed 100% to breaking the cycle of traces of feces making it back in their mouths.  They understood that it would take more than latrines, it would take a whole behavioral overhaul to rid them of the risks they were putting themselves in.  That is a real sanitation program!

All sick or silly stories aside, sanitation is a serious business.  It’s been almost 10 years since NGO started flooding into this country with various attempts to alleviate poverty and facilitate development.  One major focus has always been water and sanitation, and yet last year UNICEF reported that 257 of every 1000 children born in this country, was dead before age 5.  Diarrhea is a significant cause to that figure, last year 75,500 children died due to diarrhea.  Rapid latrine-building projects and ORS distributions have not curbed these figures, something more must be done.

And just in case you have some sick notion that God is showing his wrath to this people, let me remind you that our mandate is to spread the message of a God who created man in His image, who is in fact a God of life.  How will we do that, unless we care about the number of their babies that are dying?