Seeing Sanitation

As my previous post alluded, failures to address sanitation deficiency in SSA lie in a parochial understanding of what sanitation actually means to people. That said, this post would go further to suggest that this misjudgement is itself bound up within an international trepidation about all things faecal. Despite the intimate concern of every human on the planet, the disposal of human waste remains something of taboo subject. It engenders something distasteful and unmentionable, spoken only in manner of lewd ribaldry (Black & Fawcett, 2008:3). Whilst this may be sufficient scrutiny in countries of water sewers and disposal systems, when trying to implement meaningful sanitation upheaval it becomes problematic. How can change be expected in a problem no one is willing to articulate, even acknowledge? Ultimately, this has led to ‘hardware’ sanitation projects having little effect without their complementing ‘software’ counterparts. Indeed, unless people from the developing world live in circumstances that predispose them towards toilets, why would they use them? This disregard is also exacerbated by an ‘absence of academic curiosity’ enduring the tired assumption that sanitation will come with water (George, 2008:151). For example, we talk of the menace of water-borne disease when it is more a menace of lacking sanitation that contaminates water to begin with. Black & Fawcett advocate the pressing need to unpack and challenge these anathemas to generate truthful knowledge of the problem to be solved.

As part of this, the temporal and spatial variations of the sanitation taboo must be acknowledged. As is the common leitmotif of wider development studies, place and space determine unique facets of a problem reflecting specific cultural contexts. Thus is the need for more ‘place-sensitive and participatory approaches to sanitation that are sensitive to local culture, socio-economic status, political ecology and physical environment’ (Jewitt, 2011:609). This point is particularly pertinent in Africa where vast open plains and relative isolation have fostered a variety of unique cultural principles. For example, the Akan community in Ghana are so disgusted by the idea of human excrement that they have ‘refused to think about it’ (Van der Geest, 1998:12). Instead they employ ‘krufoo’ workers often from Liberia or Sierra Leone who work at night to remain ‘invisible and out of mind’ (1998:10).  In Madagascar, there are strong cultural taboos against one persons excreta being put on top of another’s – a seemingly sensible rule where the heat of the sun works to deodorize and crumble the waste. They also have strong rejections to burying waste in the ground for fear of it contaminating the dead (Black & Fawcett, 2008:82). In Uganda, British colonial reports suggested opposition to the use of cesspits because of a perceived risk of sorcery (Gillanders, 1940 in Jewitt,2011:615).

Yet, views of sanitation are also perceived along axis of race. In the colonial imagination, ‘binaries separating clean and sanitary Europeans from their disgusting colonial others’ established distinct geographies of provision and perception (Jewitt,2011:610). These ardent colonial legacies are still present in African cultures of sanitation. For example McFarlane & Silver detail how sanitation in Cape Town exists not as a problem of service provision but as one of ‘socio-political syndrome’ (2017:126). Sanitation here is more than just toilets and waste disposal; it is a deeply historical process of racism and colonial segregation that although banished from the surface, endures in the inner workings and unspoken facets of the urban form. To this end, McFarlane & Silver advise that addressing problems of sanitation in Cape Town are impossible without first addressing problems of race (p.126).

Gendered perceptions of sanitation are also central to understandings of sanitation taboos and failures. Again, there can be specific geographies to this difference but in all occurrences; men and women have very different needs and experiences of sanitation. Typically, women have particular issues around safety and privacy that require facilities that are not only dignified but geographically nearby. Indeed, for many women of the global South the threat of molestation forces them to wait until the cover of darkness to relieve themselves (McCarthy,2014). Further to this, young girls require adequate facilitates that allow them to navigate the difficulties of menstruation. This is particularly pertinent in schools where poor sanitation has been closely correlated with female attendance (McMahon et al. 2011).

All of these examples stylize the different ways in which Africans ‘see sanitation’ and help to expound the importance of accurate research and an engaging dialogue to understand suitable contextual approaches. To do this, we must peel away these illusory surface understandings to appreciate the real everyday workings of practice and feeling. As Black & Fawcett so succinctly surmise, ‘we must dismantle the last great taboo, and learn to talk about… shit’ (2008:10).

In my next post I will review some wider policy approaches to tackling awareness and understanding in the face of the emerging sanitation crisis.