I'm grateful that several of you asked about bathrooms - they have long been one of my favorite subjects! In fact, the first time I ever wrote a blog post, it was for a now-defunct group in Shanghai that helped foreigners prepare for and adapt to life in China. My post was a guide on the variety of toilets foreign guests might encounter and key tips for Westerners about using the toilets correctly (e.g. which way to face in a squat toilet, what to expect around toilet paper). When I returned to the US, toilets stayed a part of my work in terms of issues of access and how this oft-used space can teach us about society. People excrete. For health reasons, we'be developed systems where we excrete in specific locations with an eye to keeping dangerous microbes contained. Unfortunately, we face and we create a variety of barriers to building and maintaining bathrooms that contribute to public health. Cady noticed a detail in my post about Global Handwashing Day and asked, "You said that the water from the sinks is heated in the winter, does that mean they don't have hot water all year?" In Boris Dînga Middle & High School, the water heaters were installed almost exactly one year ago. Getting hot water was a huge step towards community members washing their hands more consistently. When discussing hand-washing, many expressed suspicion of my statement that it is better to wash our hands with cold water than not at all. Part of the idea that cross-breezes cause colds is that they cause us to feel cold - and many believe that being cold is what causes colds, thus adopting ”disease prevention” strategies such as never drinking cold water, avoiding touching cold water and surfaces, and insisting that we wear hats & many layers outside even if we ourselves feel hot. For the record, being cold does not cause colds - only viruses do. I found that the water heaters were turned off all the time that the general heating system was turned off (late winter through mid-October). I haven't asked why, though I imagine it's to save money. I have yet to know of another volunteer at a school with water heaters. In fact, a few are at schools that don't have heating at all. For a project I worked on last spring about menstruation, I gathered photos of a variety of bathrooms in workplaces and homes. Please enjoy a slideshow of them, below. Clay asked a very, very important question about the situation: ”What steps have you and your group taken to solve problems like lack of soap, hand washing, and cross breezes?” Knowing that we have ideas about disease prevention outside of avoiding cross-breezes and cold that have been shown scientifically to prevent the spread of disease, we do a mixture of education and infrastructure projects. We do education to build a base of understanding on which to build healthy behaviors (for example, understanding what microbes are, how they cause diseases, and how they spread then teaching & reinforcing behaviors that reduce their spread). In terms of infrastructure, we help people learn how to apply for and successfully complete grants that go towards installing water systems in communities that only have access to wells, that go towards installing water filtration systems where water is unsafe, and that go towards installing bathrooms and running water in public places. Let Girls Learn is a key initiative started most visibly by FLOTUS Michelle Obama that Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) support throughout our service. Its goal is to expand access to education for girls around the world. One of its key partnerships is with Water Charity - together they are working to build bathrooms and bring running water to schools around the world. Lack of bathrooms and running water cause access issues for all young people, but is particularly onorous for menstruators when they begin menstruating and begin missing 1/4 of their schooling (if not quit altogether) due to lack of resources for menstrual hygeine and stigma around menstruation. Many volunteers have helped their schools and communities install indoor bathrooms with running water. If you'd like, you can help promote one such project today! PCV Jenny S. in the village of Fîrlădeni is working with her school to raise the funds to do this. Please see their pitch video below: Several schools a year in Moldova complete a project like this with Peace Corps Volunteers, and many more with the support of other organizations. In another project, PCV Cynthia K. is working with the NGOs EcoVisio and Clean Water Foundation to provide high-performance, high-volume water filters for schools and hospitals throughout Moldova. This year, fifty different schools and hospitals who currently lack safe water will be equiped with these filters and the means to maintain them, ensuring safe water for years to come. PCVs also assist other organizations in their work around bathrooms. I am one of many over the years who have worked alongside the volunteers of TEECH, which is a small English NGO that works with communities in Moldova to install indoor bathrooms with running water in schools as well as provide other aid. Below, you can see the before (on the left) and after pictures of this past summer's project in the village of Ivancea. I hope that you have enjoyed reading about, looking at, and thinking about toilets as much as I have had writing about them! Each time you wash your hands with running water and each time you flush the toilet this week, I encourage you to think of our students and send wishes of success to all the projects we undertake to make it possible for them to do the same!
1 Comment
Jenny
1/5/2017 10:19:00 am
You provide great information about bathroom. You write so clear and I appreciate how much you have taught me about restrooms.
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Rebecca LehmanHealth Education volunteer serving at Boris Dînga Middle & High School in Criuleni, Moldova. Archives
May 2017
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