Happy World Toilet Day!

Last week, when I could not get on the internet, I missed an auspicious day for a post: World Toilet Day!!!  In an email I received from CAWST - an organization that works in the domain of water and sanitation - I read this following information:

Now, let's get down to business. We're making a stink about #FecalMatters 

because 6 in 10 people do not have safely-managed sanitation. 

That means that poo isn't making it into toilets, pipes, pits, but into our drinking water instead. 

Poop just isn't funny when this is the case.

Now, this information above would hold true for Niger ... but, though I don't work in terms of sanitation and latrines, the celebration of this day gave me a platform to share a story and photos of some work at my village home ... of which I came home feeling accomplished and proud!

My village home has an open-air outhouse ... "squatty-potty" as I like to call it ... in the backyard.  There is a little solar powered light installed which helps at nighttime.  And I've learned to not use it at certain times when I know that planes are taking off from the airport as I feel these guys fly low enough ... What if they can see me??!?  I am sure they are higher than it looks, but I play it safe!  

It takes some practice to "shower" ... for the first few weeks I stayed overnights, I dropped my soap and bath spongys down the hole - yes, for those who know that I spoil myself with a supply of bath spongys for the living of life in Niger - I lost one!!  It kind of was sitting on the lip of the descending tube, but I wasn't fishing it out!

Anyways ... I digress!  

My first night out in the village this year - as I went to the bathroom in the evening, I picked up the nice wooden cover ... and at least 20 cockroaches underneath in scattered in erratic flight to find cover!!!  EWWWWWW!!!  Thankfully, none ran over my feet!  Were they attracted to the pine-scented toilet soap I had used to clean the latrine??!?  What had attracted them to my outhouse?

It took until the next day to realize that the rubber tire border on my wooden cover had worn off!  The cover on the outhouse hole was an evolving wonder:  at first, it was built to cover the hole so that the septic hole did not become filled with the blowing sand of the desert!  But then, my teammate who built the cover also devised the rubber tire border - to allay my concerns that the dark covered hole could hide scorpions and snakes!   Neither are entities that I want to encounter at 2am if I go out to the bathroom!  The cockroaches, though disgusting, are the least of my worries!!

So - I set off to hammer a new rubbertire ring border onto my wooden cover!

The husband of the village family who lives "with" me right next door helped with the task.  The first thing that we discovered was that we couldn't stretch the old bicycle tires around the cover - they needed to be cut!  

"No worries," he said, "I have a knife!!"

And back he trots into the yard with his machete!!  .... It did the job!

As I pulled out my hammer and nails, Midou declared me a "good mechanic"!!  Woohoo! Something new for my resume!!  ha.  He either had great trust in my hammering skills; or, having never used a hammer before, does not know the pain of hammering one's finger: for he held the rubber down with his hands awfully close to where I was hammering!!

Disclaimer: as I have since hammered my thumb a few times this past week hanging pictures ... he had no real reason to trust my hammering skills!  

In the end - the job was finished and my outhouse cover is ready for use again!

Since installed, the route underneath is covered almost completely - I've opened up the toilet of an evening to discover the odd cockroach and baby gecko dancing around in the porcelain hole ... but; no spiders, nor scorpions, no snakes, nor no more cockroach parties of the entire neighbourhood of cockroaches in attendance!!