Community Total Lead Sanitation Update

                                                                                                                  
By Titus Obbo

This summer UVP developed a new approach for community involvement in the Community Total Lead Sanitation (CTLS) program. Kidaago B is experiencing a new way in the community life. UVP interns this summer helped out to clean the bore hole together with community members. The Village Health Team and Water User Committee have set up the calendar for hygiene and sanitation in the community and defined the governing rules intended to phase out poor facilities and install hygienic ones in households. In particular, dirty jerri cans and buckets will not be allowed for use of collecting water at the well. 

Collaboration with UVP has resulted in a cascaded effect down to the households where members have waged a war against open defecation by digging pit latrines. The village has clustered households in groups of ten to help each other build a good pit latrine that can last for at least more than 15 years given the nature of the soil texture.


UVP would like to thank its interns this summer as well as donors and broader UVP family for their hard work and support!

Titus Obbo is UVP's Safe Water and Healthy Villages Program Coordinator. Titus is a graduate of Makerere University with a degree in Human Resource Management. 

Stories from the Field: A Most Awe-Inspiring Week

By Alicia Majeau


Although I have already written two blogs about the happenings in Kidaago B, I asked my team if I could usurp the right to reflect upon life in the village once again.  This was, in no way, due to any particular affinity for writing on my part, but simply because this past week is the one I feel has been the most awe-inspiring for me, and likely the most impactful for our community.  The week of July 9 was the sanitation week for Kidaago B.  During this period of time, we shared the results of our sanitation baseline survey with the community, trained the Village Health Team members in building basic sanitation structures, and went compound-to-compound, trying to improve individual households’ sanitation.  Over the course of the three days of the actual sanitation push, my team (working in cooperation with our awesome housemates from Kidaago A) built a total of 38 tippy-taps (hand-washing devices), built or improved 27 trash pits, built or improved 15 plate stands, built 12 latrine covers, created drainage for two washrooms, and helped begin or improve 10 latrines.  While many of these terms may seem arbitrary and their impact vague to those who are unfamiliar with sanitation in a village setting, they are all hugely important, yet fairly simple, devices or steps that can be taken to protect water sources, reduce disease, and generally improve health.

My awe at this week does not, however, come from these numbers that reflect sanitation improvement, or even from the incredible tenacity of my teammates and housemates, facing long hours in the field laboring under a hot sun.  Instead, my awe is inspired by the eagerness of the villagers to improve their community’s health.  To begin with, Kidaago B has some incredible Village Health Team members.  One man in particular, always eager to serve his community, spent all three days of the sanitation push working with us to assist his neighbors.  Even after we had finished working hours at the end of the day on Friday, this VHT, Awali, requested that we leave him materials to continue the work for a couple more hours independently.

The three days also resulted in story after story of people putting in more effort to improve sanitation than I ever expected.  In order to convey a sense of ownership, we charge 500 shillings (a subsidized price) for materials in order to build a tippy-tap.  One man, in particular, claimed he did not have the money necessary for such a hand-washing device.  Upon witnessing us build his neighbor one and teach both the adults and children the proper method of hand washing, he eagerly asked us if we could build him one as well, suddenly finding a way to afford it.  My team also found family after family who had chopped wood prior to our arrival for use in building a tippy-tap or plate stand.  Word spread like wildfire throughout the village that we were moving around doing this push, and the response was overwhelming.  The appreciation of the villagers, when I, myself, was appreciating them and their efforts so much, made every bead of sweat and muscle ache entirely worth it.  It is difficult to say whether this effort will continue once my team has left, but I truly believe that with the help and guidance of the VHT that I cannot say enough good things about, Kidaago B will soon be a village to be rivaled in sanitation levels.

Alicia Majeau is an incoming graduate student in the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She interned with UVP in 2011 and returned this summer to serve as an Administrative Team Leader in Kidaago B village. 

Digging it Forward

Sanitation may not be sexy to the rest of the world, but it is essential in keeping a community healthy. When UVP does a sanitation push in a community (mobilizing the community to dig trash pits and latrines, build plate stands to dry dishes, and make hand washing devices called tippy-taps) a community is equipped to improve its sanitation household by household.

Our “all hands on deck” approach to sanitation pushes can result in an interesting assortment of people digging and hammering in one of our 10 Healthy Villages. Beyond community members and staff, district officials, and even volunteers from other communities. In March, a Peace Corps Volunteer lent his energy to one of our pushes.

More than a welcome set of hands, Nick also took what he learned from UVP and has begun applying it in his own village. He shared a bit of experience with his family and friends:

Work has been going well; my Pit Latrine project has really taken off by itself. I started digging one pit latrine, (I learned from the Uganda Village Project in Iganga) then Julia came to my site and three pit latrines were built by people I have never met. Then I came back a week later and 20-30 people have built Pit Latrines. I was really proud of the villagers about taking over the project and really wanting to create change in their community. I am doing well with other projects. The school I teach at wants me to teach about sanitation and life skills every Wednesday. I really like the kids I teach, they have actually followed me home (which is about 30 yards from the school) and asked for more homework, something I don’t think that ever occurred to me to ask my teachers when I was their age. –Nick Duncan

Sanitation Week Stories

We partnered with the District Water Office in March, in order to do sanitation work in all of the Healthy Villages, in celebration of International Sanitation Week. We were meant to specifically focus in Nabitovu - district officials and a team of 50 university students would go there every day to do house-to-house sanitation education and hands-on work. District officials also planned to visit each of our HV villages, however, so that all were participating in "Sanitation Week." We had already arranged "hands-on days" in each of our other villages, this time the district offiicals would come along for the ride. Part of UVP's annual sanitation goals this year include holding these sanitation 'push' campaigns in each of our Healthy Villages.

The Sanitation Days really began on Wednesday. On Tuesday, to get everything organized and ready, Julius had held a hands-on training with 4 of the university students and a bunch of the VHT members. He went over how to make a tippy-tap, a plate stand, etc. He also helped the VHT members come up with an action plan - for the rest of the week (Wed - Sat), all sanitation workers would divide into 6 groups. Each group would be lead by a VHT member (or perhaps 2), and a UVP or District individual (or perhaps 2), and have around 8 or 9 university students. Over the course of the week, we worked with these teams to ensure that each team was constructing tippy taps that was up to standard, and UVP staff used our bicycles to travel from home to home checking in on the teams. We also provided lunch to the university students, to allow them to put in a full day's work.

In the end, it was an incredible, amazing success! On Friday, I went to the meeting place, knowing that I would find somebody working nearby, and indeed I did: I found Edward, one of the VHT members. He was wandering around with a bunch of Jerry-Cans over his shoulder and a bundle of wire, and he agreed to take me over to Julius's team. On the way from Kasokoso's (the meeting place), we passed house after active house - the entire village had come alive with sanitation work! It was incredible. Houses were being "smeared" (this apparently keeps fleas away), tippy-taps were everywhere, wood was being cut for plate stands and latrines and trash pits were being dug... two individuals stopped us, as we walked the 2 or so minutes to Julius's team, in order to ask Edward about getting a tippy-tap, or wire, or string, or something like that. Edward told me that the whole village was like this - "people did not go to their gardens today," he said. "They have been working since morning, just doing sanitation."

It was truly amazing. It seemed like the university students, district people and UVP staff, had somehow become a critical mass, and ignited a fire of action in the village that was now continuing without us. Everyone is working! Everyone suddenly wants their house to be as excellent as their neighbor's! It is truly inspiring to see.
-- Leah Bevis, Healthy Villages Coordinator