THE LAST TABOO
CHIEF ALFRED SAFARI DERI: Before, before we had latrines, we could find shits everywhere. The moment you move here and there you come across some shits, and this one resulted, so many people to visit hospitals because of sickness and whatever.
We now see good life, people don’t visit hospital anymore, they are healthy enough. They are rejoicing, they are very happy, to an extent of singing songs which are touching about shits, that ‘we are not longer, eating shits’ that is ‘hatuli mavi’, as they sing.
MARGARET KAHIGA: Shit is very dangerous to peoples’ health. A lot of times, especially in the rural areas, people don’t have piped water, so you will find that, you defecate in the open, all that goes actually into the water systems, and this is the water they’re actually taking in. So it is quite dangerous.
And of course, it’s also one of the leading causes, especially diarrhoea, it’s actually one of the leading causes of death, for children under five years, and it’s all about sanitation.
A lot of Kenyan’s you’ll find they’re not very open to talking about shit, or they’ll actually not call it shit, because people try to say like, if you want to go to the toilet, you’ll not actually say I’m going to the toilet or I’m going to shit, but you’ll find they’ll, that they’ll say like, maybe I need to help myself. So they look for different ways, it’s one of the taboo subjects, something you don’t talk openly about.
One of the main taboos that was there, and one of the barriers that has been there to people adopting the use of latrines, has actually been on the issue of, people actually believing that I cannot use the same defecating place, like the toilet, with my daughter in law of my father in law, because in some cases they believe that it can actually make you die. If you actually use the same latrine, then you can actually die.
JEFF MOHAMMED: A walk down Mathare is one of the most different experiences you can have, even for me, I live in Mathare but each time I walk in Mathare I get inspired for life. It might be bad, it might be ugly, but it’s life and it’s different. A walk down Mathare, you’ll see children full of life, happy to be alive, they’ll yell out, they’ll sing, they’ll do everything, they’ll be playful. It might not be the usual, but it’s wonderful, even though it’s bad. Yeah, it’s a diamond in the rough.
Sanitation is a really huge issue in Mathare, because you will find a toilet being used with almost five thousand people, it’s a really huge sanitation problem. Because 5000 people using one toilet, it can cause diseases, it’s unhygienic at first and it’s a big mess.
MARGARET KAHIGA: I think change can only come through the heir, and that’s why even for plan, we do try to target children and the young people to actually change peoples attitudes, because it is very difficult to change the older peoples attitudes, they are used to some of those things, they say nothing has ever happened to them, like some of them they say I’ve never used a toilet, and yet I’m alive, I’m not dead, I’ve survived, so what’s the big deal? And also you find that the older generation, most of them have also not been to school. And also, in terms of issues like diseases, a lot of them believe that probably someone is sick or has died because of witchcraft, not because they were sick.
CHIEF KIRAGA KIBONI CHARO: My name’s Kiraga Kiboni Charo, senior assistant chief, (N.A.) sub location. After I, I discovered that my people were, were really in erm, suffering from problems due to shit, I decided to start a campaign, a campaign, in every meeting I had, I’d call up every baraza, my message was, people should start digging pit latrines.
Community Led Total Sanitation lies in three principles. One, disgust, two, fear, three, shame. First of all they draw the boundaries of their village, and then we ask them, what resources they have within their villages, so they tell us about the churches, they tell us about the roads, they tell us about barns, they tell us all kinds of resources they have that they are using within their village.
So after they have done that one, then we ask them where they go and shit, ‘where do you shit? If you feel like shitting where do you go?’ Then definitely they will locate where they go and shit.
We tell them to wash their hands, we give them bread, then we tell them to eat.
After eating, we shall ask them, can you take us outside, so that, the nearest place where we can get the shit, we get the real shit, we get the real place where you shit! Definitely they will tell us, let us move in that direction.
VILLAGER 1: Fresh ones wow! ... Good, fresh!
KIRAGA KIBONI CHARO: We shall take bread, put it adjacent, we put the shit, and then we put bread adjacent to the shit, then definitely flies will start flying from the shit. And we should get fresh shit, fresh shit, shit that is fresh! And if we see it there, we should spread it, so that some flies and so many other, other insects will come there. So the flies will start flying from the shit and then flying to the piece of bread.
We shall also have a bottle of water, we take that bottle of water we put, we take a piece of wood, we just touch the shit, and then put that piece of wood, we put it in the water and then we try to shake it, and then we shall tell them, ‘ok now, you have eaten the bread first, so right now I would like one to come here and take this bread and eat’. Then we shall take the water and tell them, ‘take the water and drink’. We shall ask them, why are you not eating the bread? Definitely they will come with the answers that, it is because a fly has flown from the shit onto the bread.
MARGARET KAHIGA: It’s shocking, it brings a shocking reaction to people, and they see ‘we have to do something about it’. ‘This is our shit that is being brought in front of people, this is our shit that we are talking about, this is our shit that is making us get sick.’ And it actually rides on those three factors, fear, disgust and shame.
VILLAGERS DISCUSSING BETWEEN THEMSELVES.
COMMUNITY LED TOTAL SANITATION LEADER (TRANSLATION): Have you organised a committee amongst yourselves?
GANZE VILLAGER 2 (TRANSLATION): Yes, the five of us will be in charge.
GANZE VILLAGER 3 (TRANSLATION): There are places there and there where we can build latrines.
CHIEF KIRAGA KIBONI CHARO: In the triggering today, we have found that it has been so successful because all the three components of the triggering has been seen evident. The fear, the disgust and the shame has been seen evident. And the villagers have really discovered that they are eating their own shit, and they have come up with a programme of starting to dig pit latrines and they have given us a deadline of two months, so from today up to September, that is the deadline when we shall go there and find out whether they have finished or not. But according to what we have seen, by that time, everybody will have a pit latrine in that village that has had the triggering today.
MARGARET KAHIGA: In the urban areas actually, there are more challenges when it comes to issues of sanitation because, especially in the slums. Because you do find that in the informal settlement those people don’t actually own that land, most of them are just tenants of some other absentee landlord. And a lot of time they will not actually care about the living conditions of those people, or they have the basic services that they actually need.
MAMBO DENNIS: My name’s Mambo Dennis, I work with an organisation called Community Cleaning Services. We empower youths to set up sanitation businesses and address issues of poor sanitation in their community and in doing so it becomes a source of income for them to earn a lively hood. Most toilets in these areas are shared, in residential, where we have toilets, so you can imagine a toilet used by about forty households, with an average of five people per household, you can imagine the state of the toilet at the end of the day or at the end of the week. Basically you can say, shit is my business.
When the barrels are full and they are taken out of the toilet, the team carries them from the toilet to, we have a bio-centre, which is near by, run by a community based organisation. When the barrels are emptied into the dome, the gas is harvested and we have kind of a gas burner and we have a separate kitchen area. So the whole idea is for this community based organisation to harvest the gas and have members of the community, they can use the gas for cooking, for heating water for kids who have their bath in the morning and they are going to school. It’s a source of income also for this local based organisation.
Due to lack of space to put up latrines, we end up having such structures. So people come to these structures, go inside, the shit drops into the drainage and then hopefully, they hope there is water coming from the homes, which will flush it eventually down into the river. You will find that you’ll have many of these structures along the riverbed because that’s the only areas the space is available.
Open defecation in Mathare is a big problem, because of the lack of latrines, you end up having sights like this where people come to open defecate, especially at night or early mornings. You find whole families, fathers, mothers, children, coming to areas like this to defecate.
So basically in an area like this, when you come to trigger this community around here, there is something called the transact walk. You come, actually with the community, you walk around these areas, and people see where they defecate. Maybe somebody who did this in the morning will see and say ‘I’m the one who did this’ and so in the process he is shamed. And then they see actually the flies, and they see the movement of the flies, and the smell, they can smell and then you bring all the angles of diseases. Among the community they discuss, how does this shit find its way into their houses?
As an organisation, the main role we play is empowering and advocacy. So you give this community voices, and some of the solutions people have come up with, people have come together in their own residential area and they have demanded for toilets from their landlords, for they are paying rents, and there is no latrines, so they demand for toilets.
Also, there is advocacy from the local government or the area counsellors, to come up with, even if it’s, what we call ‘community toilets’. So those are some of the solutions people are coming up with.
JEFF MOHAMMED: People power is possible in Mathare, we can do it if we come together, anything is possible when we have one common goal and one common direction, and the aspect of leadership in all that. We can go forward, we can change this Mathare from what it is, to what it should be, yeah.
MAMBO DENNIS: Initially the biggest challenge was to get the buy in of the community, most of the people just wanted to complain, what is the government doing, what is the area counsellor doing? But now we feel we have the community backing us in this whole process, and it is really working, once you get people to buy in and identify their own problems, then you gain momentum.
MARGARET KAHIGA: One of the main reasons for the success of Community Led Total Sanitation is because the change comes from within. It is actually the community members’ deciding and making that decision, resolving that we have to change the way we live. It’s not someone else telling them ‘you have to build a latrine’. Even in the triggering sessions, it’s up to them to make a decision.
VILLAGER 4 (TRANSLATION): We can be proud of our village now, so shall we tell the whole world of the changes?
MAMBO DENNIS: Our dream in the next five, or even ten years to come, we see an area with every household, at least they’ll have a toilet, even it’s shared, even if it’s ten households sharing two toilets. That’s our dream. Once the community get, really get involved in their own sanitation issues.
JEFF MOHAMMED: Mathare should be place where kids can go, wonder off and play without having them step on some shit. It should be a place where we don’t have to hear ‘a teenager got killed because he was a robber’. Mathare should be a place where we don’t have HIV and we don’t have TB. Mathare should be a place of hope, Mathare should be a place where, whenever the school results come out, it’s the top schools are from Mathare. Mathare should be a place of hope and not a place where the government neglects, because we are also people. Poor people are also people you know, and we are all smart and we can do so much.
Director - Tony Steyger
Producer - Kate Iles
Kamau Levitt
Camera – Greg Michael
Editor – Greg Michael
Location Sound - James Andraza
Translation – Dina Nziku
Sound Mixer – Jon Vaughan