SANITATION: Making toilets the norm in rural Niger

ZINDER, 23 February 2011 (IRIN) - Candid talk about human excrement is making people in rural Niger, where only 2 percent of the population has adequate sanitation, insist on building and using toilets: A project there is showing people from scores of villages the dangers of open defecation.

“We put barely a speck of human waste [from the ground on the outskirts of the village] in a cup of water and ask assembled villagers who would care to drink it - no takers, of course,” Souleymane Atawaten, water and sanitation coordinator with Plan Niger, told IRIN. He and his colleagues demonstrated how flies swarm around human waste and food. “People quickly realize the danger - the link between their waste and illness.”

Plan Niger is one of several NGOs working with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and government health workers on community-led total sanitation (CLTS). Niger is one of the latest countries in West Africa where the approach is being used, according to Jane Bevan, water, sanitation and hygiene specialist with UNICEF’s West and Central Africa regional office. This month Sierra Leone - where CLTS began in 2007 - announced its 1,000th open-defecation-free village. Most West and Central African countries are not likely to meet Millennium Development Goal sanitation targets, according to UNICEF. Child mortality rates are among the highest in the world, with diarrhoea estimated to cause up to 20 percent of these deaths. But practices that contribute to this can change, Bevan told IRIN. “Once people get [that they are regularly coming into contact with excrement], it’s transformative. The disgust over essentially eating one another’s faeces is universal. Very quickly the people agree they do not want to be doing so… and they see that they all have a responsibility.  “It is about a social norm. Before, the norm was people defecated in the open. This can change quite rapidly.”

Not only were people in the Niger communities OK with open defecation - some thought it was better, villagers told IRIN. Some think many people using the same latrine are somehow less wholesome than everyone finding a spot in the bush. Beyond that, social taboos dictate that it is disrespectful to use the same latrine as one’s mother-in-law, say, or in the proximity of family members, according to Plan’s Atawaten. “This is where we must address the cultural side of things,” he said. “There are ways around these taboos; some families build more than one latrine, but usually what happens is a pattern will emerge - families will do a sort of ‘planning’ around who uses the latrine when.” 

“Before this, I was hesitant to relieve myself with anyone seeing where I was going or knowing about it,” said Rachida Idi, a resident of Arthé village about 900km east of the capital Niamey in Zinder Region. “This is why we women always waited till nightfall and went far away. But now we see that it’s for our own good to have toilets.” Atawaten said people in the villages where he works - "particularly the women" - are now insisting on latrines. He said it is critical that people understand the importance of maintaining latrines and keeping them clean. “Otherwise the facilities will pose the same problem as open defecation - just closer to the home.” 

Hygiene educators often turn to religion in this predominantly Muslim country, he explained. “People are used to doing their ablutions and they know they must be clean to pray and do so in a clean place,” he said. “We use this to talk about the importance of cleanliness.”

Source: IRIN