What is it with our public toilets?

Writing about dysfunctional public toilets may sound trivial given the many problems African public institutions are grappling with. Common decency, however, often manifests in basic things. Where we decide people we serve deserve to go to answer the ‘call of nature’ is one such thing.

I was introduced to flash toilets at Weruweru Secondary School, then arguably the cleanest in the country. Everything, including walkways and toilets, was spotless. Our headmistress, the legendary Maria Kamm, used to threaten us with a visit to our future homes to see if we kept our toilets clean:

 “I will first ask to use the toilet before I am given anything to eat. Only then will I decide to accept or not.”

That threat revisits me every day I encounter a toilet that defies human dignity. Fast forward to the University of Dar es Salaam, then the only higher learning institution offering degree courses. You knew you had entered the campus from the stench coming from bursting sewers and dysfunctional toilets.

Fifty years since graduation, the public toilet situation in the then Faculty of Science and Social Sciences, now College of Art and Social Sciences (CASS), has hardly improved. This is even though the university student population has expanded exponentially, and each additional infrastructure is furnished with some but not proportionate toilet facilities.

Some years ago, I visited a friend living on the outskirts of Mbale in Uganda. In the vicinity, I saw a pit latrine with big signage reading, ‘Donated by the American People,’ followed by that signature handshake you all know so well if you went to school in the years when Tanzanian pupils used to consume yellow corn flower, seed oil, and powder milk and bulgar wheat from the kindness of the American people.

I felt ashamed on behalf of the whole of independent Africa. What embarrassed me was not only that Americans had funded a latrine thousands of miles away from home. It was that six decades after independence, a basic facility, like a toilet, remains dependent on external charity.

Back home, for nearly a decade now, two organisations which formerly distinguished themselves for fiercely advocating for gender equality and quality education have become conduits for donor-funded school toilet construction projects. From inadequate toilet facilities at the highest levels of education to donor-funded toilet facilities provision at the primary level over 60 years of independence, what does it tell us about ourselves?

If we cannot provide toilets for our own children, even when we can afford to maintain a loft lifestyle for our elected and appointed top echelons of leadership, what does that say about our understanding of development and setting priorities as a society? No wonder we continue to be under the illusion that foreign aid is a panacea for our development. Yet, it is no secret that for many donor countries, development aid accounts for 1% or less of profit extracted from a recipient country. And they get to choose the sector to support; almost always those which give them leverage for further exploitation.

These memories crowded my mind when I recently visited a museum in Kisumu, Kenya. Quite extensive and impressive, much as in its infrastructure and approach, it is still a colonial relic.  That notwithstanding, buses full of visiting students and several paying tourists milled in to see its permanent exhibition. The outer toilets I was shown were the dirtiest I have visited in recent memory. Users have long stopped entering. Instead, remains of both the long and short calls littered the entrance and its environs.

I often hear lazy arguments explaining away this phenomenon, that we lack cultural faculty to maintain cleanliness in modern toilets because they are not rooted in African tradition. The same arguments are used to rationalise rundown infrastructure as an inherently African problem. Supposedly, we never had a repair and maintenance culture either!

On the contrary, many traditional communities maintained sanitation facilities with greater care than some modern institutions do today. Maintenance was routine in all the traditional dwellings I know of. From replacing worn-out thatch on the roofs to plastering and embellishing walls and floors. Even worn-out mats used for carpeting were replaced regularly.

Pit latrines were often dug deep, well plastered, and openings swept clean every morning. Ash was also applied to minimise smell. As a child, the most profound toilet training included cleaning after use in case you missed the target. You would find a broom at a corner in every village toilet.

With our level of development and as tax-paying citizenry, nothing should prevent us from demanding, and getting, adequate and functioning sanitary facilities in any public institution, including schools. No excuse for that. Our silence in this is complicity.