Going to the washroom was a major consideration on our western trek. It's interesting to read a Globe article about how an enterprising couple from Winnipeg is helping Third World countries with the dilemma.They have set up an active latrine trade in Cambodia where "some 85 per cent of rural dwellers defecate in fields, creating a massive public-health problem."
"The reasons for Cambodia’s dismal sanitation rates were no mystery. Installing a toilet ran about $150, well beyond the means of the average Cambodian, and few people responded to hectoring public-health lectures about the ills of defecating above their water table."
“Somehow, we had to make the world’s most unsexy product seem attractive to people who knew very little about it."
First, they redesigned the toilet and called it Easy Latrine, a simple $30 toilet using a prefabricated chamber, pipes and a concrete pit. Where an old-style latrine took a whole day’s work and several contractors, any villager can install an Easy Latrine in a few hours.
Officials with other NGOs, including the esteemed Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are now asking for the couple’s help in other sanitation enterprises around the world. "They’ve even been inducted into the World Toilet Association hall of fame (yes, it exists)."A story like this reveals the benefits of our lifestyle that many of us take for granted in developed countries.
Why do we fret over those many fashionable, designer decisions for our homes when so many throughout the world have so little?
