sanitation – Aspirational Adventures

World Toilet Day 2022

This post first appeared on Godspacelight.com https://godspacelight.com/2022/11/19/world-toilet-day-2022/

Melissa has asked if I would do my third World Toilet Day post in a row. How could I refuse!

Did You Know?

More people in the world have a mobile phone than a toilet. Of the world’s seven billion people, six billion have mobile phones. However, only 4.5 billion have access to toilets or latrines – meaning that 2.5 billion people, mostly in rural areas, do not have proper sanitation.

https://www.worldtoiletday.info/

I want to start with this quote. I do like a good statistic. But the more I look at this I see that there are 1 billion people who do not own mobile phones but 2.5 billion people who do not have proper sanitation. From my reading of this there are people who own mobile phones who do not have proper sanitation. How can one see owning a mobile phone as more important than being able to go to the toilet in peace, safety and hygienically?

Is it lack of knowledge? Is it lack of understanding? Is it lack of awareness of the importance of good hygiene? This really has left me pondering.

All of you who have read my previous posts on World Toilet Day will know how passionate I am about toilets. I am having a bit of a worry at the moment because I am going to stay with a friend who has just moved house and I am wondering about how many toilets she has in her house now, especially as she has told me her daughter and her family, which includes a husband and two kids, might be staying the same time as me.

I decided to google the history of toilets and it turns out they have been around since Neolithic times with an understanding of the need for bodily waste to be somewhere away from where people are living. So why do 2.5 billion people not have access to proper sanitation?

Another quote:

accepted patterns dissolve and uncertainty grows, we become more vulnerable to feelings of insecurity, anxiety and fear

Michael Meade, Mosaic Voices podcast page – healing and making whole https://www.mosaicvoices.org/episode-299-healing-and-making-whole

I think this quote might be of help. As Wikipedia says, the developing world is struggling to get good sanitation. I wonder if the above quote is a clue. All of us across the world are facing a time of “accepted patterns dissolving and changing” which we are all struggling with in the West but imagine if you are in a developing country, a war-torn country, in a refugee camp where you have no stability. War is raging. There is famine. You are displaced from what you know and love. The whole population is dealing with “feelings of insecurity, anxiety and fear”. What is going to be most important – communication or sanitation?

I know if I was fearful for my family, my children, my friends, I would want to be able to contact them so would put my money into making sure I had a good phone that could be charged up quickly and easily. If I could get money through to feed myself and my family via my phone I could see that as the most important thing. When I needed to go to the toilet then I would wish there was somewhere safe to go but for the majority of the time it may not occur to me. And for the men who are very much leading in these countries it is only when they need to defecate that they would probably think about it at all.

Also what is more glamorous if you are a young man wanting to look good in your developing country – making sure there are toilets or carrying a gun and a phone?

So as I ponder this I do not blame the people who have the phone but no toilet. I think of the unstable world we all live in and pray “Your Kingdom come, Lord” as well as “please help us all to forgive ourselves and each other”.

And then I will donate some more money to https://www.toilettwinning.org/ or https://www.wateraid.org/stories/toilets-save-lives or https://www.christianaid.org.uk/ or other charities like this.

Photo by Gabor Monori on Unsplash

World Toilet Day 19th November 2021

This post was first published on Godspace.com on 19th November 2021

Being grateful for having a toilet must be one of my passions because I wrote an article for Godspace last year on this–although for some reason I did not post it on my own blog!

To be honest I do have a bit of a toilet obsession, having suffered with IBS for a time, until firstly I stopped gluten and dairy. I did that for a while and then got into QEC Counselling – which I do know I bang on about but it has changed my life. I do still worry about knowing where toilets are and if there are too many people in the house for the amount of toilets. Yes, it is a thought that passes through my mind. And I am sure I am not the only older person who feels that way!

I met up with some older ladies in the park dog walking the other day, and they were doing the thing old people can be guilty of – saying the younger generation don’t know they’re born lucky- and one of the things was about outside toilets. Both ladies remembered having to go out into their backyards to use the toilet and worrying about spiders and other creepy crawlies. Though both did admit they wouldn’t go back to those days; it is alright to reminisce and look through rose-tinted glasses, but we do all like our inside flushing toilets and do very much take them for granted.

But imagine not having a toilet at all, or when you did go out to a shared outside toilet there was a chance of being bitten by poisonous spiders or snakes, or for the girls, the fear of being raped. And the cleanliness of these holes in the ground is not good at all.

The statistics on the United Nations World Toilet Day 19th November website are sobering.

Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with feces.
Every day, over 700 children under five years old die from diarrhea linked to unsafe water, sanitation, and poor hygiene.
3.6 billion people live without access to safely managed sanitation [There are about 7.9 billion people in the world so that means nearly half of them do not have safe, clean water to drink or hygienic places to go to the toilet – I wonder how they feel about the whole “wash your hands for 20 seconds in hot water” mantra?]

But did you also know that for every dollar spent on hygienic sanitation and clean water $5 dollars gets saved in medical costs? Wow, so little can save so much.

But it doesn’t only save on medical costs, it helps with productivity in the workplace. Imagine being a woman without proper sanitation during your period or when pregnant! But when money is spent on toilets in the home, in schools, in the workplace, these women are not only safer and healthier but also able to reach their full potential and truly fulfill their role in their society. They would no longer be marginalised, fearful and “unclean”.

Sanitation is one of the basic human rights recognised by the UN which are not being met in far too many places. Perhaps as we move towards Advent and Christmas we should see how we can help promote human rights in countries that too often get ignored. One way is to sponsor a toilet via Toilet Twinning, and check out the UN website for ways to learn more. Be alert and aware as to how blessed we are in the West and how much we take for granted, and be willing to see what more you can do.

You might feel like just a drop in the ocean but if all the drops in the ocean stopped being drops then the seas would vanish. If each of us is our little drop then we can change the world.