Veronica, the Head Cashier at Ecotact’s most active facility in the heart of Nairobi’s Central Business District, sees thousands of customers come and go each day. Street vendors, newspaper hawkers, and drivers of buses and Matatu (speeding mini-buses on steroids), businessmen and businesswomen, beggars, job-seekers, government employees, and weary travelers like myself – she encounters them all. She happily takes their 5 Ksh (about $.06), hands them a piece of toilet paper, and watches them as they exit, merging into the sea of people at one of Nairobi’s busiest intersections.
Oh, and on one occasion, she had to leave her cashier post, enter the women’s room, and help deliver a baby.
Veronica is a recent graduate from North Eastern Province Technical Training Institute in Garissa; a hot, dry, and all together not-too-exciting part of Northeastern Kenya near the border of Somalia. She studied Human Resource Management, and hopes to go to graduate school one day. She’s been working at Ikotoilet for almost 4 months, trying to earn enough money to go back to school, and while she knows nothing about being a midwife, she had little choice one day but to rise to the occasion and offer a helping hand.
For many poor women in Africa, going to a hospital for childbirth is unfortunately not an option. Although clearly the safest choice (for mother and child), it is often too expensive, and the women are therefore left with limited options. While a public toilet wouldn’t seem to be one of the most attractive options in Nairobi, the Ikotoilet apparently is. These high-quality, public, pay-per-use toilet and shower facilities located in urban areas of Kenya, are not only a good place for a shave, sanitary toilet and shower, but apparently on multiple occasions have been used by women going into labor, because of their highly sanitary conditions.
While I can understand that the 5 Ksh entry fee is bundles cheaper than a hospital, what astounds me is that in a culture where bathrooms and public sanitation are taboo, and public facilities are typically places in which you wouldn’t want to spend more than two minutes (let alone the time it takes to bring a child into this world), Ikotoliet actually becomes a viable option for expecting mothers.
I’m not advocating that all Ikotoliets across Kenya hire a midwife and reserve a part of its operations for maternal health – let’s leave that to the hospitals, clinics, and professionals. But if this sort of behavior doesn’t give you the sense that Ecotact is doing something right in redefining sanitation services in Kenya, I don’t know what would…
Jonathan Kalan runs The BoP Project, whose mission is to discover, document and share stories of remarkable social entrepreneurs, enterprises and innovations that are redefining poverty alleviation through economic development.
Tags: Ecotact, maternal health, Photo of the Week
Pretty amazing. What’s the baby’s name!?