Toilet Talk

This will be a way-deep-south blog.

I visited my friend who was a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador the year after I graduated from college. I had traveled through a few third world countries, but nothing could have prepared me for this. I got off the plane in scorching hot and dry San Salvador, and to quench my thirst, I drank water out of a plastic bag for the first time. Yes, that is how it is often sold there. We took a pick-up ride to his little town, and through the whole 2-hour trip we were in a cloud of smoke from the sugar cane fields that line the highway, which they burn before harvest to clear out brush and get rid of rats and snakes. Soon we were winding through village behind a school bus. I was appalled by the coke bottles and potato chip bags that were being tossed out the window into the road side ditch, which was already full of trash. What a country, I thought. Over the next couple of weeks, the poverty, overpopulation and environmental degradation only seemed to worsen. I never got used to it as I had any other not-so-bad countries.

So, I could Identify with the quest of the 'toilet lady'. Sanitation was obviously a huge problem. Many towns only had running water for a few hours a day. The schools lacked adequate facilities, and as Christine Moe said at the Voices of the Vanguard talk, this caused many girls to leave at a young age. My Peace Corps friend did not even have a bathroom.

He took some time off and we travelled around the small country working on other volunteers' projects. One of the volunteers was building toilets just like the one's Christine Moe showed last week. To cut a long story short, it was a fun project and attracted the attention of the other villagers, who lead a struggle of an existence, often walking miles a day to carry water that barely sufficed for cooking. Sanitation was a privilege, but once people saw the benefit and comfort it provided, they wanted to be next in line to get one. The topic was raised in discussion at the lecture of how to spread the idea of actually wanting to live in a more sanitary environment. As I observed, these simple toilets did bring an amount of prestige to the families that got them, and once the ash was spread over the human waste, the smell was not bad at all.

What does this have to do with Jackson County? Well, I think we all make decisions on an everyday basis that affect our health and the quality of our environment. It made me realize how ridiculous it was to be flushing drinking water down the toilet several times a day when we all have learned through recent droughts that we don't have an unlimited supply of water in this part of the country. Maybe we don't all need composting toilets, but we can do other things that may influence our neighbors, break stereotypes and create a healthier and more sustainable environment for all of us.