You haven’t lived until you experience the joy & gratification of helping others in a developing country. It only became clear to me just prior to this trip that cholera is a pervasive problem in Africa. It’s hard to get donors and foundations excited about projects with goals of constructing latrines, but cholera and other diseases can be eliminated with effective sanitation practices. The UN has designated 2009 as the international year of sanitation, yet there’s very little funding for sanitation projects. Even the indigenous people we help while training our students don’t realize that sanitation practices reduce mortality rate more significantly than providing them safe drinking water. It’s not very glamorous, but somebody’s got to do it.
For the last two weeks of Sept 09, three Lifewater volunteers went with me to Ndola, Zambia to teach advanced sanitation training. Our primary goal was to teach students how to construct latrines in waterlogged areas so that they wouldn’t over flow, collapse or otherwise fail during the rainy season. It became very clear on our first day there that there were a multitude of problems. The solutions were often simple, but most Zambians (or even schools for that matter) don’t have enough money to correct the problems. One solution seemed intuitive yet we had to point it out: construct the latrines on high ground (or build a mound to make high ground) rather than construct in low lying areas. We suggested eleven solutions to the latrine failures like composting, larger overlap of slabs over the pits and roofs.
We constructed demo latrines at a new school that had no latrines for the students or teachers. Lifewater provides development training rather than relief, so we required the school to provide community support. Local women helped us dig the pits and construct one of the slabs for the latrines, but the local men refused to help even when asked.
For the last two weeks of Sept 09, three Lifewater volunteers went with me to Ndola, Zambia to teach advanced sanitation training. Our primary goal was to teach students how to construct latrines in waterlogged areas so that they wouldn’t over flow, collapse or otherwise fail during the rainy season. It became very clear on our first day there that there were a multitude of problems. The solutions were often simple, but most Zambians (or even schools for that matter) don’t have enough money to correct the problems. One solution seemed intuitive yet we had to point it out: construct the latrines on high ground (or build a mound to make high ground) rather than construct in low lying areas. We suggested eleven solutions to the latrine failures like composting, larger overlap of slabs over the pits and roofs.
We constructed demo latrines at a new school that had no latrines for the students or teachers. Lifewater provides development training rather than relief, so we required the school to provide community support. Local women helped us dig the pits and construct one of the slabs for the latrines, but the local men refused to help even when asked.
