Daddy here again

I can't believe this is only my second post. Maya - when you read this one day - I do apologise but your Mummy is such a good writer and I forget this blog is for you too! She does make me giggle and tells the story so well, but only I can tell you what happens when I go to work.

Sight of the proposed community toilet block on 'lake land'. The school is in the background and the slum out of the picture to the right.

In the last 5 months, I've helped kickstart the process of getting things built; like a community toilet block and mini wastewater treatment plant in a slum for 900 people. This was our first construction contract awarded and has since ground to an abrupt hault when some government officials turned up with sledge hammers one day and started knocking down the temporary site buildings! We could have paid them off, and every other time they came to visit us, but we are an organisation with a clear ethical principles and doing so would fuel the unending cycle of corruption.

The issue of land is a tricky one. Most slums are encroachments into Government land and are never really 'official' because making them so would legally require the Government to provide basic services (ie. drainage, lighting, water, sanitation, waste collection, etc). Many slums are densely packed making it difficult to build things like toilets because there's simply no space. The obvious place for us was next to the school (particularly as the kids have to shit in the open if they need to go during class). But this area is the bed of an old lake, one of the many that were built many moons ago to recharge the groundwater and provide a constant supply of water for the city. But the lake has now dried up (due to rampant development in recent decades that has irreparably changed the character of the watershed) and it would make perfect sense to build a toilet block there. Right now, more than 1000 people a day shit in this area because they have no toilet to use, meaning raw sewage directly entering the small river.

So the case for proper sanitation is an obvious one. But no, there is not one Government agency (and there are 9 who have some responsibility for the lakes) who will give consent for us to do this. So we've had no option but to take it to the courts to try and get a Court Order changed to allow us to build this most basic of services for the people in the slum. The process is slow and involves many meetings with senior officials and politicians. Our Project Manager is leading this task and hopefully she will have some success soon. I hope so - the sight of those school children climbing over rocks and through other people's excrement really makes me angry! It is pitiful that this is accepted and not given the urgency that it deserves by the decision makers who no doubt retain their dignity by using a proper toilet. More to follow....