This month's Rotarian arrived on Saturday. If you aren't familiar, it is a magazine for Rotary members- yes, The Other Mother is a member of Rotary. Don't judge. She's also the past president of the Kiwanis. Don't judge or laugh. Really. I said don't laugh. I see you smirking.
Anyhow, the feature article was all about the lack of appropriate sanitary toilet facilites for the disposal of human waste, and the resulting contaminated drinking water in many developing countries which leads to disease and death and what Rotary is doing about it.
The article focused on the reasonable goal of bringing folks one step at a time up the ladder of sanitation. "After open defecation, the next rung is unimproved sanitation facilities, such as uncovered pit latrines and bucket latrines, which don’t provide a barrier between people and their waste products. Then come facilities that are shared by more than one household, such as public toilets. At the top of the ladder, improved sanitation facilities ensure that waste is fully separated from human contact and eventually handled in a hygienic fashion. These include pit latrines with a slab, ventilated improved pit latrines, eco squat toilets, composting toilets, and flush toilets that are connected to a septic tank or sewer system.
Interesting article.
Who knew there was so much going on with toilets??? It was fascinating. Read it here http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews/TheRotarian/Pages/toilets1001.aspx
Then today on CNN.com there was another great article about two women Sasha Kramer, 33, and Sarah Brownell, 34, founders of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihood (SOIL) are working in Haiti to improve sanitation with composting toilets. Disease is rampant, and it's still common for children to die from fecal contamination in the water. UNICEF estimates that 70 percent of Haitians do not have access to "safe drinking water and adequate sanitation." Wow. That is just wrong. The article quotes Karmer: "the most prevalent human rights abuse is really poverty and the fact that people didn't have access to their basic needs." Amen sister. To highlight the importance of their eforts, they even passed along a little of their finished compost to former President Clinton when he was recently visiting Haiti. (Check thier work at http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/04/haiti.SOIL.toilets/index.html
Anyhow - the point of this random post? I don't know. I think I am just feeling a little guilty in my 4 bedroom, 2 and a half bath home with my choice of bathrooms to use when so many in the world don't have even one proper flush toilet in their whole village.
Once again, dear God, I am thankful for all the blessings and conveniences that we have, especially flush toilets and hot running water. Amen
Amen. We have no idea how fortunate we are.
ReplyDeleteI often get hung up on all that we have and I embarassed to say that we have places in northern Canada that live withour the luxuries that those of us in south have like safe water to drink - it is appaling that in this day and age we can't get it togehter to make sure the people of the world have safe water to drink.
ReplyDeleteMe too. We have THREE and a half bathrooms. I am mortified to say that out loud. Two of our bathrooms have double sinks, and I actually taped them off so that we don't use them (because there is no need to, and I refuse to clean extra sinks for no reason).
ReplyDeleteI lived in Uganda for 2 years. I spent a lot of time in the countryside/rural areas. I was once offered tea made from water collected from a stream that was downhill from a pit latrine and a burial site (AIDS deaths rampant, so lots of burials and no coffins). In some places, the conditions are so poverty-stricken that you cannot get your mind around it.
ReplyDeleteCompost toilets are amazing. I want to install them in our house, but they are less expensive when installed in a new build that can be designed for them. Retro-fitting is expensive. I spent a weekend in a house in downtown Boston that had composting toilets, and you would never know. They are odorless!! And you get extremely valuable soil at the end of the process.