A pit latrine inside a free public toilet facility in Limuru Town

“Mwambie asiingie huko!“ screamed the woman in the marketplace, Swahili for “don’t let her go in there!”.  The “her” she was referring to was me and the “there” was a public toilet. After stepping into the facility, which was a local municipal toilet, I realized the concerns of the woman, and almost instantly wished I had heeded her warning. I had seen a few government facilities in Nairobi before but the uncleanliness and stench were beyond anything I had previously experienced.  My colleague at Ecotact, Rehema, and I were on a tour of some of Ikotoilets’ competing facilities as part of a larger project to create procedures around the site selection process for Ecotact. This particular incident took place in the main marketplace in Limuru Town, about one hour outside of Nairobi.

The site that had been selected for an Ikotoilet facility in Limuru Town was near the main market area, where hundreds of people gathered everyday to sell spices, maize, grains and fruit. We were on a quest to understand whether it made sense to place an Ikotoilet facility in this area and to identify what factors made a “successful” facility in order to create a process to prevent entering failing localities in the future. Ultimately, the guidelines we created looked at factors ranging from the number of competing facilities within one kilometer of the proposed site and the foot traffic around it to the accessibility of water lines and the political support of the municipality.

Out of the 16 facility visits we completed, which included locations such as Nakuru, Machakos, Uhuru Park and Railways, we were able to start piecing together exactly what commonalities existed in the more successful facilities and what criteria we needed to include in our diligence process when choosing locations. Through our visits we found that the most meaningful insights came not necessarily from the council and municipality members we were working with, but rather, from the average person who worked, lived or transited through the location we were considering. In Nakuru, it was only through asking women sitting on the side of the street and men working at the nearby repair shop that we learned that there were two free facilities- one in a nearby marketplace and one behind a carwash, within 100 meters of where we were considering putting an Ikotoilet facility. The councilman was surprised to learn of this as they were not official, public facilities and he was not aware of their presence.

What was even more interesting was how people reacted to using these public facilities – although they were not in the best conditions, they were free and a large portion of the people we spoke to said they would opt to use a dirty facility for free rather than a clean one for 5 shillings. Of course in areas like Limuru Town, where the alternative was abhorrently dirty, not just unclean, they were willing to pay the 5 shillings. This made me reflect on the concept of dignity and at what point the cost outweighs the benefits of dignity.  At Acumen, we constantly talk about the importance of providing people with a sense of dignity, so I was surprised to find so many choosing to continue using the free facilities. However, I realized that dignity doesn’t necessarily stem from using a cleaner toilet – it comes from the fact that the members of the community have a choice of which facility to use.  They can decide their own standards and don’t have to use a dirty toilet because there is no other option. I realized that our role can only go so far as providing an alternative and allowing people the opportunity to redefine their standards because if it went any further, we would destroy that which we worked so hard to create: dignity, self-empowerment – choices.

Rabia Sarwar started Acumen Fund’s volunteer chapter in Dubai. This summer, she spent four months in Acumen Fund’s East Africa office in Nairobi working with Ecotact and recently returned to Dubai.

This concludes the 2010 Summer Spotlight series featuring posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.

The exterior of an Ikotoilet facility