Toilet Training the Nation

This was the rather provocative title of a recent news article discussing the state of sanitation in the second of my worlds. An official from the Health Ministry is quoted as saying that as of 2010 some 42 million people in the country still defecated in the open. But this was down from 71 million in 2007 so they have made phenomenal progress in three short years (if the statistics are accurate).

Since people from the first of my worlds probably find that amazing and wonder what people do, let me hasten to explain that it is a timeless tradition in the tropics around the globe to use local streams, rivers, rice paddies, ditches or just a spot in the nearest banana patch or woods. It usually rains a lot and washes it all away, plus the strong tropical sun dries (and rots) things quickly. And where dogs and/or pigs run loose, well, they also help with, uh, waste disposal. Friends tell me of having to take a stick with them to keep the pigs away until they finished doing their “business”. People living by the sea just wade out a ways and go and the waves and tide will wash it away. The problem of course is that as the population grows, so does one's risk of catching a waterborn disease!

Even in the Mega City you can still sometimes see people using ditches and canals, especially children. Of course in big cities it’s easy to build a toilet without a septic tank, especially if you live along a main road with drainage canals beside them. You just run the “out” pipe into said ditch or even build a little hut over the ditch. Some people still use chamber pots or plastic bags and go empty them into the ditch after dark.

This is the goal

The article discusses that one of the biggest problems is changing people’s mindsets. Even if the government or some other agency builds them a toilet, some people will still not use it. When I first went to live among the No people many years ago there had already been a sanitation project where two squat-toilets with bathing area had been built for every 4 families, complete with concrete septic tank. The project  also put in wells with hand pumps near each toilet building. People liked having the wells but few of the toilets were actually being used. They said the problem was water.  Since you can't put in a well too near the septic tank or you may get contamination, they had to carry the water to flush the toilet. Not only that, they didn’t like keeping it clean (they said neighbor kids would use it and not flush and leave it a mess.) It was easier for them to do what they had always done – use the roadside irrigation ditch or an irrigation ditch out in the field. They felt it was “cleaner”.

Slowly over the next two decades though, most families in that No village did build a toilet in or next to their homes and nearly all now have their own well. In fact most have installed small electric pumps so they can more easily fill their concrete water tanks in the bathroom making it easy to bathe and flush toilets. Gone are the days of hiking a kilometer to the river with a dozen empty coconut shells to get drinking water! But even so, there are still a few die hard families who can’t be bothered to build a toilet and to this day, 2012,  continue defecating outside in a ditch. Unfortunately, even with toilets, many people still allow small children to relieve themselves anywhere. And there are always a few people who aren’t on the ball cleaning up the kids’ messes so you still do sometimes need to watch where you step.

In the article, a junior high boy was quoted as saying he’d rather have a satellite dish (for TV) than to have a toilet. That is not at all an uncommon attitude. I have been in many rural homes which have a TV, a motorcycle or two, sometimes even a satellite dish and a refrigerator, but not a toilet. The problem isn’t money, it’s a mind set.

The mall as oasis

While living in the Mega-City one of the oases is the mall.

Malls have essentially taken the place of public parks. Many people come not so much to shop as to hang out in a cool place. The malls are particularly crowded on Sundays as people generally have the day off and like to go out as a family or with a group of friends. The bottom level of my favorite mall has a bumper car section which is usually open on Sundays and holidays with little kids screaming, squealing, and laughing as they bang around in the cars. Indulgent parents smiling from the outside of the ring seemingly oblivious to the sensory overload.

Malls in the first of my world sprawl horizontally, but here they soar vertically. My favorite mall is at least 8 stories high with an open center. Each floor is connected by slow-rise ramps making it like a corkscrew. It is possible to walk from the second floor all the way to the top without having to use the escalators. Of course it is faster to use the escalators but if you want a cool place for a walk this is ideal!

Several Sundays I met friends for lunch after church at the corkscrew mall. There are several restaurants and fast-food places all through the mall but on the very top floor is a food court with tables in the center and food stalls serving a wide variety of relatively inexpensive food ringing the outside. Several churches rent the auditoriums on the upper and bottom levels (as it can be extremely difficult to get building permits to build new churches). So many of those people also filled the eateries before or after their services. I did also shop a little as there were a couple of decent bookstores and a largish supermarket but I usually made sure I got a good walk in as well – up to the top and down twice!

Many if not all malls have a hotel and/or condominium tower connected to it. They tend to have a lot of higher end shops and boutiques but also an assortment of medium ranged goods and services and typically include a supermarket, pharmacies, hair salons, fitness centers, banks, and electronics. There are also seasonal "events" in the central area. These can be related to holidays, but can also include appearances of celebrities, promos, contests and the like. The picture at the right shows a cosmetics demo/promo taking place on the ground level.

There is another mall which is a bit closer to where I was staying, though harder to get to because it was located at the intersection of two major toll roads and was accessible only by crowded narrow service roads. That mall was fancier but I found the ambient quickly overwhelming. There are a lot of shiny surfaces, glass, mirrors, marble floors, and particularly harsh eye-hurting lights which had the impact on me of me wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. I mentioned it to the land lady  and she said she too felt the same way about that mall and so usually shopped at one further away.  I wonder if the mall owners have any idea.........

Mega City Snapshot

Living in this mega-city is always an experience. This time I am staying in a private sort of boarding house, though a very nice one. My room and bathroom are clean, newly painted, airconditioned and actually quite a bit nicer than my own place! I even have wireless internet access. There's a small airy courtyard just outside my room with various potted flowering plants, and a Madonna.  The owners live just across the street and usually visit every day. Most of my three plus weeks here I was the only one staying here.


But every day I would leave my clean cosy pad and walk out into the real world - the world of heavy, hot, humid, pollution- and dust-laden air. The roads were crowded, gritty, and often completely gridlocked. That's why I usually walked the 2 km - it was faster! I held a handkerchief to my mouth and nose the whole way to try to decrease the particulate matter inhaled. I disguised my laptop in a cloth shoulder bag and lugged it along too - great weight bearing exercise I might add!

The route took me along some extremely congested small roads with houses and shops opening very close to the street. Sometimes a hapless chicken would be tied by the leg to some post perilously close to the mayhem in the street. People were often seen sweeping piles of trash up and then lighting them, noticeably increasing the general haze. Eventually I came to one of the large canals that drain much of this city. I didn't really need to cross it but since the road on my side was under construction, it was sometimes faster to cross over and walk down the other side and cross back at the next bridge. On the far side the road was wider and one-way  and traffic zipped along. There wasn't really a sidewalk but there was a path most of the way and if I looked to the left and kept my nose covered I could kind of imagine I was walking along a tree-lined river. Well, I did say "imagine". In truth those canals reek and it's hard to ignore the trash and bubbling sludge on the surface. In the distance I could see some of the glittering high rises growing up all over.

I guess people just get used to it. I wonder if I ever could?  I find the chronically hazy, overcast looking skies and ambient pollution very depressing. Whenever I am here I soon dream of the blue skies, fluffy clouds and cool air of the first of my worlds! Or at least the blue skies and brilliant white clouds of the more remote islands, even if they too are hot! And I feel a little guilty because I know that I eventually will be able to get out of this city and go to a cleaner, prettier place while all these millions will still be stuck here.

Clueless in Paradise?

No, I did not get lost between my three worlds. I have just been busy visiting them all! Sometimes there are just too many amazing things happening too fast to even take notes.

I recently read a book titled Hotel K by Kathryn Bonella. It is based on several extended interviews with foreign prisoners who are or were incarcerated in an infamous prison on a certain southeast Asian tourist island. It was a horrendous tale of life inside a prison where money will get you anything, anything at all - and lack of money is a serious problem. Most of the foreigners in there were there on drug charges. It should be required reading for anybody even thinking of using drugs!

Today I read about a 56-year-old British woman who, along with four other foreigners,  was recently arrested for smuggling several kilos of cocaine in her suitcase into that same country. It is truly difficult to grasp how someone that age can be so clueless. Her excuses are impressive. Even though she has supposedly been living with a new "husband" in India for the last 5 years,  she was smuggling this stuff to prevent someone from killing one or both of her troubled adult sons back in Britain - one having recently been released from jail. She has no money, yet somehow jets around to Britain, India, Bangkok, and the tourist island. She knew she was bringing in something and figured it wasn't tulips or cheese but hoped that somehow she could get it in anyway. She got caught in the airport and then agreed to continue on and help the police with a sting operation on the people she was supposed to deliver the cocaine to. She obviously never read Hotel K.

On the one hand I feel no sympathy for her doing such a stupid thing, but on the other hand,  having read Hotel K, well, I can't help but feel some sympathy anyway.