FT Hunger Action Diaries

Amelia with children during CLTS training

A word of caution to readers: in this entry, I talk in some detail about “open defecation” so parts of this blog may not be for the squeamish!

This week Action Against Hunger/ACF has been hosting a week-long workshop on Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) for staff and local government. CLTS is a method developed to address poor sanitation, specifically targeted at ending open defecation. The method was developed in 1999 by Dr. Kamal Kar in Bangladesh, as a hands-off intervention to trigger communities’ disgust and action through understanding the harm open defecation causes in their water sources, food, and villages. (Lack of adequate sanitation is a leading killer worldwide). It has since been implemented in countries throughout the world, including Uganda and other east African countries.

We hired an external consultant to come and facilitate the training, and 26 of us met in Lira, northern Uganda. The first two days introduced us all to CLTS – what it is, where and when it was developed and the fundamentals of the approach. Ultimately, CLTS is about facilitating a process and allowing a community to develop its own disgust around open defecation. On the third day of the workshop we travelled to two villages in Otuke District: Ogor and Atat.

Children's group mapping their community

Because the trip down dusty dirt roads took three hours – longer than expected – we became concerned about the time. We had left at 8am, but to avoid travelling on roads after dark, which would have broken security rules, we would have had to depart the village by 3pm and we still needed to mobilize the community! Much to our surprise, when we pulled in to Ogor, more than 140 children and adults were sitting under the shade of a mango tree awaiting our arrival. No mobilisation necessary – let’s get to work!

After the customary rapport-building and introductions, the first step in CLTS is developing a village map. Roads, houses, important landmarks such as schools and churches were all placed on the ground using either coloured paper or locally available materials like leaves. Then community members were asked who has a latrine in their households. For those who do not have access to a latrine, we, the facilitators, asked bluntly, “Where did you defecate this morning?” This was followed by laughter and embarrassment, as the community slowly identified where they went to relieve themselves.

Then came the fun part. We asked a few members if we could take a walk around their village and see some of the places where people say they defecate. I went with the children’s group, who enthusiastically ran into the bush to show us where most people in the village go. It didn’t take long before we found a specimen. With the goal of evoking disgust, we stayed there, talking about feces, smelling it and poking it with a stick. Finally, we took it back to the community.

The children were a little more than disgusted. With the waste sitting proudly in the middle of our circle, we invited a child to drink some of the bottled water we brought. We then dipped a small amount of the waste into the bottle and asked who would drink it. Everyone refused. A banana was placed on the ground next to the waste. Flies soon found both, and travelled easily and freely between the two.

As women, children and men scrunched their noses in disgust and argued about what to do, someone said, “Don’t worry, there are two types of flies in the world, those that sit on feces, and those that sit on food.” At the end of the day, the community had created its own action plan, identifying the needs and a timeline for when they would complete the construction of latrines and become open defecation-free. While the whole process seems a bit disgusting, that’s the point, isn’t it? And from the results we are seeing worldwide through CLTS, it seems to be working.