Adopt-A-Latrine!

In my village, hygiene-related illnesses are a huge problem. Next to malaria, they represent the highest number of visits the CSPS receives. One huge contributor to this problem is the village’s lack of latrines. I see people of all ages doing their business on the side of the road in the bushes on a regular basis (and let me tell you, it’s a little disturbing to see a grown man squatting to defecate in some bushes where anyone can see him). But there are worse consequences than grossing out the local Peace Corps Volunteer when people go to the bathroom in the open air next to their courtyards. Flies land on the poop and then go to land on people’s food or hands or dishware and eating utensils. When it rains, the rainwater washes the poop into the local wells where people get the water that they drink. People around my village are literally ingesting little bits of their own feces and it obviously causes them to come down with various fecal-to-oral illnesses. So when the Peace Corps announced the opportunity to attend a workshop on hygiene and latrine building, I jumped at the chance.

Two masons and I went to the workshop a couple of months ago and the entire week was spent discussing good hygiene practices such as hand-washing and using latrines. Of course, we also learned to build latrines. At the end of the workshop, we created an action plan describing how we were going to bring the things we learned back to our village. We planned lessons to present to the community about the importance of proper hand-washing (one of these presentations is pictured in my previous blog post about the 8 Mars celebration). We are also doing a project distributing hand-washing stations throughout the village, particularly in places where people usually eat or use the bathroom. Finally, we are planning to build 15 new latrines around the village so that people will have more access to latrines.

While my village members are very eager and willing to donate time and labor and smaller miscellaneous purchases to this project, cement is expensive! Each latrine needs about $135 worth of cement and so I wrote a grant proposal asking for money to buy cement and iron bars while community members take care of the labor. The kind of grant I applied for is a specific kind that allows people back home (meaning you!) to be involved in the project by donating to it. Every little bit counts and 100% of what you donate goes directly to buying supplies for latrine building (and it is tax-deductible). Please visit the website for more details and to help make this project a reality!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-216

If you still have questions, feel free to ask me!
Finally, if you want to support this project in another way, share this blog entry with your friends!