Tag: WASH

A People-Centred Approach to Citywide Sanitation

As the global development discourse formulates the post-MDG agenda, sanitation is a core area that demands attention. Having for too long been neglected by governments, as is reflected by sporadic service and dilapidated infrastructure for the urban poor, it is one of the MDG’s that will not be met by 2015. Sanitation provision has a key role to play in creating the political and legislative conditions for well-located land to be made available to the urban poor. The work of the urban poor in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, India and many other countries across the SDI network demonstrates explicitly that sanitation is not just about toilets. It speaks to issues of equitable access and tenure security. If governments and urban poor communities provide sanitation facilities in partnership (as has been the case in countries like India and Uganda), then an in situ political and financial investment has been made in slum areas and, as a result, eviction (or relocation) become far less likely. Additionally, sanitation provision implies discussions around water provision, drainage, solid waste management and connections to bulk city infrastructure. 

Alongside evictions, inadequate sanitation is a central crisis in slums. For several decades the sanitation development framework was driven vertically by engineers, with those in greatest need of sanitation facilities given the least in terms of access, design, usage and management. SDI federations have begun serious local and national discourses exploring all elements involved in ensuring that slums are initially open defecation free, and subsequently, have adequate sanitation for all.

Debates about whether toilets should be located at the household or community level continue worldwide. Within SDI, the pragmatic sequence is as follows. 

• For slum dwellers, sanitation is a governance issue. It is the duty and obligation of cities to ensure all fecal matter is collected and disposed of hygienically in a manner that is non-threatening for citizens and the city.
• The present deficit is huge and cities having ignored the issue for many decades, which now makes initiating solutions very difficult.
• Cities have to participate in the challenge of ensuring universally available sanitation. It is an essential contribution of community networks to document lack of facilities and engage the city to ensure sanitation access.
• Infrastructure (water sewer lines), density, finances (of communities and the city) and available technologies are key factors in the choices that cities and communities make about the best approaches to sanitation provision.
• In old, densely populated slums where houses are very small and sewerage access does not exist to clear fecal matter away, community toilets with safety tanks remain an imperfect solution. 

An incremental approach to informal settlement upgrading remains key to a long-term process that develops community capacity alongside infrastructure. Toilet construction and management has the potential to bring organized communities and local governments together in partnerships that have the possibility for replication in other settlements across the city. 

In addition, making a citywide impact through sanitation opens up the space for other relationships with government to be developed around associated services and infrastructure (e.g. solid waste management, grey water recycling or the provision of water).  Communities are also able to access upgrading funds and, as in India and Uganda, become the contractors who build, maintain and manage sanitation infrastructure. The momentum this generates has potential for both local and national policy reforms and articulations.  It is becoming increasingly clear that sanitation interventions and the partnerships that they create can lay the groundwork for partnerships and outcomes at a citywide scale. 

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To read more about SDI affiliates’ work creating people-centred sanitation solutions at the citywide scale, check out the following blog posts & our Annual Report: 

General: 

Taking Water & Sanitation to the Citywide Scale

Uganda: 

Project Diary: Kalimali Sanitation Unit, Uganda 

Improving Sanitation in Kinawataka Market, Uganda

Financing Sanitation Solutions in Uganda

Uganda Loses USD $177m Annually Due to Poor Sanitation: What is the Federation Doing?

Tanzania: 

In Tanzania, Scaling Up Sanitation for the Urban Poor 

In Tanzania, Reaching the Wider Community Through Improved Sanitation 

 Slum Dweller Federation of Tanzania Leads Construction of Public Toilet

Kenya: 

In a Risky Place: Women & Sanitation in Nairobi’s Slums

India:   

SPARC’s Strategy for Community Toilet Block Construction & Maintenance in India

South Africa: 

Partnerships through Upgrading: 5 Cities Delegation Visits Langrug Settlement

Waterborne | Water & Sanitation in Slovo Park, South Africa 

Communities Work with Government to Improve Sanitation

A young man walks past a pile of garbage in Viwandani ward, Naivasha.

The delay in garbage collection was a major source of problem for the residents of Viwandani in Naivasha. When taking a walk in the Viwandani area, one was faced with more than two feet of water collected stagnantly in pot holes perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, uncollected garbage scattered haphazardly and foul stench filled the air.

The community faced harshest of challenges when it came to water and sanitation as there are no proper water drainage and sewerage systems. In addition, the supply of piped water was inconsistent and unreliable leaving the community to rely on water supplied by water vendors which was costly and inconveniencing.

About 40 plots had no sock pits, and the sewer systems had burst scattering the flow of sewage in the villages, exposing the residents to high risk of infections.

Poor environmental sanitation, lack of access to clean water and open drainage, are one of the major risk factors supporting the spread of diseases like Cholera.

It is out of these hardships that the residents of Viwandani ward came together to discuss the poor sanitation and lack of water. Through local lobbying and advocacy teams formed through Tushirikishe Jamii project, they engage in community forums, dialogue and active lobbying seeking solutions to the problems facing them.

The residents held several meetings key among them with the public health officers, Naivasha water company services, municipal council of Naivasha, National Environmental Management Authority and the District Development Officer.

For four months from January, the community engaged in to and fro shuffle activities seeking to address this problem. At one point the residents had to write a memo to all stakeholders complaining of unfulfilled promises and slow reaction to their grievances by the health office.

Their incessant efforts finally bore fruits as the Public Health Office promised to give a comprehensive report on the matter.

On June, the water and sewerage company invited the lobby and advocacy committee to their office and after further consultations, they promised to repair the entire burst sewer within 48 hrs and to always ensure that the sewer systems in good conditions. The company later unblocked all the sewage line within the 48 hours as they had promised.

The local landlords were also issued with a notice to construct sock pit for each plot and those whose premises are located next to sewer lines are to follow the necessary procedures to ensure an effective sewerage and draining system.

The municipal council on its part pledged to ensure quick collection of garbage in all the villages. Thanks to Tushirikishe Jamii project for adding new approaches to communities to the achievement of our needs.

Tushirikishe Jamii, a project of Forum Syd, implemented through Muungano wa Wanavijiji (Federation of Slum Dwellers) and Youth Alive Kenya, is funded by the European Union through the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs NSA-net Program. The project seeks to enhance community participation in devolved funds and governance.

In a Risky Place: Women & Sanitation in Nairobi’s Slums

By Ariana K. MacPherson, SDI Secretariat

“As women we are in a very, very risky place.”  – Doris Museti, Mukuru Kwa Reuben, Nairobi

I arrive in Nairobi on Friday and head straight to Muungano House. The building is home to the offices of the Kenyan SDI Alliance, made up of Muungano wa Wanavijiji (the Kenyan federation), Muungano Support Trust (MuST; support NGO to Muungano) and Akiba Mashinani Trust (the finance facility for Muungano). Muungano House is nestled in a cluster of green just off the busy main road, which bustles with the constant rumbles and hoots of Nairobi’s traffic.

I am here to meet with a group of women living in Mukuru kwa Reuben, one of the many villages in the Mukuru belt of slums that stretches across the eastern section of Nairobi. These women have come together to address challenges they face in gaining access to safe, adequate water and sanitation services in their village.

Before making my way to Mukuru Kwa Reuben, I meet with Jane Weru and Edith Kalela of Akiba Mashinani Trust, and Joseph Kimani of MuST. Both organizations have a key part to play in the women’s campaign for improved water and sanitation services. Jane and Edith have been working on a legal case that addresses land ownership issues for the whole of Mukuru. Since the Mukuru slums are located on privately owned land, the government is not able to make any interventions to improve infrastructure or basic services. In addition the threat of eviction is steadily increasing along with the value of land.       

Jane Weru, Executive Director of AMT, begins by describing the unique circumstances of Mukuru. “It’s a contiguous belt of slums that the SDI team guesses is larger than Kibera[*],” she begins. “These slums have a special need because they are settled on privately owned land, unlike Kibera and Korogocho.”

Jane then takes me through something of a timeline of events in Mukuru. In 2008 the need to engage became clear, and by the end of 2011 – when slum dwellers from Mukuru came to Muungano House with threats of eviction in hand – it was clear that the time had come to take action in Mukuru.

When a fire erupted in Mukuru Sinai in September 2011, the door was opened once again for landowners to begin sending eviction threats to Mukuru residents. According to Jane, the fire was very bad press for slum dwellers, and landowners took the opportunity to attempt to take back their land.  

She tells me that no one really knows who owns the land in Mukuru. AMT realized that they would need to understand the ownership patterns before they could move forward. They started investigating but were met with countless roadblocks. Eventually they were able to put together a good bit of information for cases against those landowners threatening eviction. By working with the community to mobilize and build awareness, AMT and Muungano got orders preventing any more dealings from taking place on the land while the case(s) are being sorted out, staving off evictions in Mukuru for the time being.

The connection was made between land issues and women and sanitation a few months ago when a woman from Mukuru mentioned in a community meeting at Muungano House that water and sanitation services are very poor in Mukuru because of the fact that the settlement sits on private land, outside the orbit of government’s jurisdiction for infrastructure improvements. Despite the fact that Kenya’s constitution (passed by Parliament in 2010) calls for the right to adequate sanitation, the state cannot take action on this unless the settlement is on state-owned land. Because of this, the women are asking that the state take back the land so that improvements to infrastructure and basic services can be made. The slum dwellers, alongside AMT, claim that the land is not being put to use by the landowners who gained ownership nearly 20 years ago, and that the state should take back ownership in order to put the land to use for the good of the city.

The women are busy collecting 10,000 signatures from other women across Nairobi to support their campaign, with between six and seven thousand collected to date. In addition, AMT has begun to broadcast the campaign to media outlets in Kenya and beyond. Already, local and international journalists have begun to pick up the story, a tack that AMT and the women of Mukuru hope will put added pressure on the government to do something about the conditions in the Mukuru slums.

In the afternoon, Edith Kalela and I drive across town to meet with the women of Mukuru Kwa Reuben. In Kwa Reuben and neighboring Kwa Njenga alone AMT estimates that there are about 800,000 households – all of which would be affected by evictions were they to take place. But today, free from evictions, these 800,000 households have other challenges to contend with: poor drainage, totally inadequate sanitation services, and little access to clean, potable water, to name a few.

We bump down a rough, dirt road, between factories shielded by tall cement walls from crowded streets lined with stalls selling everything from fruit to cell phones to sneakers. People mill about in the afternoon sun as we enter Kwa Reuben. The street narrows and becomes bumpier. I could probably reach out my window for a fresh mango. Soon we pull up across the road from a small patch of grass where Doris Museti stands waiting for us. Doris is one of twenty women from Kwa Reuben who has been mobilizing the community to advocate for improved sanitation and collecting the 10,000 signatures to present to government.

Doris leads us into the heart of Kwa Reuben. We come upon a large field. Children are playing football and chasing after tires in the dusty heat. As we walk, Doris and Phyllis Mulewa, another community leader from Kwa Reuben, inform me that this is the only play area in the whole of Mukuru.

Continuing further into Kwa Reuben the road narrows again and the ground becomes muddy with run-off and storm water that has nowhere to go. Doris turns off the main road and into a narrow walkway, barely wide enough for two people to pass each other.  Here I get a better understanding of what it means to have inadequate sanitation facilities. Doris and Phyllis point out that the run-off between the shacks, flowing into the walkway where we stand. Women and children use these narrow, exposed spaces behind their shacks (about 60 cm wide) as a space for bathing and relieving themselves at night, when walking the distance to the bush means running the risk of violent attack and rape.

“Getting to the toilet at night is very difficult,” says Doris, “They are closed, so you have to get an alternative. So we come to the bush, and it is very risky. You have to get two or three women to escort you. If you do not come with two or three people, it is a rape case and it will never be reported. Some women fear to escort you… As women we are in a very, very risky place.”

It’s not much better during the day. Paying for multiple trips to the public toilet facilities is out of the question for most families, leaving no choice but for children to relieve themselves in these alleyways. Later on Doris refers back to  “those houses where you can see drainage coming out like a bathroom,” explaining that, “…they are not bathrooms, they are corridors. So most people are bathing in the corridors because they don’t have bathrooms. You can tell people, ‘Don’t come out! I’m taking a bath!’”

Doris continues describing the conditions that force women and children into these corridors, “You don’t have a bathroom, you have to take a bath, the house is 10 ft. by 10 ft., you are four or three people [in the house], other people have other business in the house, so you take a bath outside… the house just smells of dampness if you take a bath in there. The water goes on the carpet, and the house is always damp. Mosquitoes are full throughout.”

So there is no option, really, but to use these alleyways. Because of the run-off, the walkways are flooded and filthy. When it rains, it is much worse. Sewerage mixes with rainwater and floods people’s homes. Disease runs rampant during these times. “Having cholera, typhoid, is very easy,” Doris says, “We had an outbreak of cholera – it was very bad. You would hear someone is sick today, and dies tomorrow.”

Even the few toilet facilities that exist are problematic. Doris and Helen Nyaboke, another resident of Kwa Reuben, describe the process of emptying the pit latrines in the settlement, “There are two or three men who come and empty your pit latrine. After emptying, they go around pushing the cart. It will spill everywhere. When they [find] a drain, they pour [it] there and then go back and drain again. What impact does that bring? They have emptied this toilet, they have spilled everything on the road, and then they have poured it in that drainage.” The drainage they are referring to is a shallow gulley that runs alongside the walkways. When they flood or clog, they spill over into the roads and walkways. I can understand their frustration with the system.

Doris relates this back to the diseases she spoke of earlier, “It has an effect on us and on our kids.” Referring to sewerage water and human waste contaminating walkways, Doris says, “Children don’t differentiate [between] that and cleanliness.” Another woman pipes up, saying, “And STI (sexually transmitted infection) is very, very high because we are sharing one toilet between more than 150 people.”

Sharing one toilet between more than 150 people. I ask the women about this, about sharing facilities with so many people, about bathing in their small homes with children and husbands running around. Phyllis Mulewa describes it to me, “About the privacy, you never know if someone is looking in the door or in the iron sheets [walls], because most of them have holes… For us as women, we feel this is not for us. Maybe it is for animals, but not for us. But what can we do?”

Evelyn Apondi, a young woman in her mid-twenties, tells me that she lives in a 10 ft. x 10 ft. “cube” with eleven other family members. “It is very difficult for us,” she says, “especially when there are fathers, brothers, sisters and mothers in the same cube and you can’t bathe, because bathing is a basic need. And apart from that, there are no toilets. It has been very hard.”

Doris and Evelyn describe what it’s like for women who are menstruating. They have to hide their sanitary towels, throwing them on top of their shacks or in the road so that they are out of the way. There is nowhere to dispose of them inside the house. Family members complain about the smell. Women are made to feel ashamed of this natural, monthly occurrence, and are forced to dispose of sanitary towels in a manner that leaves the settlement dirty, and its inhabitants at greater risk of disease.

It is the same story when a woman gives birth. There is nowhere to dispose of the afterbirth, so it is kept in a tin can in the house; “The container will remain in the house until very late in the evening,” Doris says, “What is she to do with it? She will have to wait until very late to dispose of it, maybe mix it with dirty water and then throw it out…. Nowadays, blood carries everything.”

Evelyn tells me she wants to get a job so that she can rent her own cube, have some privacy and maybe even start a family of her own, but like so many of these women, she has not been able to find steady work. “We have just been surviving,” she says.

Most of the women I speak to rely on casual work for their incomes. “You wake up in the morning and try to find a job,” says Doris. “You can sometimes find something for the day, for the week, but it is very insecure. Some women do washing. There are [lots of] small-scale traders… But it is very hard.”

I am interested to know what these women see as a potential solution to the sanitation issues they face in Mukuru. I ask them what would make the most difference in their lives with regard to sanitation. Both Doris and Phyllis suggest the same thing: “The government coming in and planning with us. Then we will have sewers and everything… Then the structure owners will be forced to do something. If the government plans for us – if they plan for residential rather than factories, and if people build their houses in order, then we can have proper drainage and proper roads.” =

I recognize this proposal from my discussions with Jane Weru earlier in the day. They want the government to claim back the land from the current landowners and re-plan the whole of Mukuru as a mixed-use area, serviced by bulk infrastructure connected to the rest of the city. This would mean widespread access to basic services and increased security of tenure for Mukuru’s residents. Doris comments on the threats of eviction that she and other Mukuru residents have faced in recent years as land values in Nairobi continue to rise:

 “We are here, and then that person – after 40 or 30 or 50 years – they are claiming back the land. Where do we go? We are not trees. Imagine you have a place, your home – how can a person come to build in your home? You have grandchildren here, they have children, and then you want to chase them out. Where do we go?”  

These women have lived in Mukuru for at least fifteen years. Most of them were born here. This is their home and they want to improve it – to work with the government to make Mukuru a safe, secure place for them and their families to live. But because of the landownership issues, Muungano, AMT and MuST cannot move forward with sanitiation improvements in Mukuru. So instead they have proposed a precedent-setting pilot project in Mathare, another settlement north of Mukuru that is settled on government land. The hope is that this project will set an example for the kind of upgrading that could take place in Mukuru once the land ownership issues are sorted out.

According to Irene Karanja, director of Muungano Support Trust (MuST), the first phase of the project will assist 800 households residing in three clusters of Mathare settlement. The total population of these three clusters is equal to roughly 2620 households. At present, the residents of Mathare have two sanitation options: they can either pay a large fee to private businessmen to connect to the informal sewer system, or they can pay to use the few community toilets, many of which are unsafe and unsanitary.

Because local businessmen own the informal sewer system, the costs for connecting to the main pipe are unaffordable for most Mathare residents. It costs USD $46 for households within 30 meters of the river to connect to the informal sewer line, and up to USD $170 for the families furthest from the river. Because of this, families elect not to pay the high connection fees and instead dump sewerage into the river.

To combat this, MuST has proposed a solution that seeks a low-cost, sustainable and scalable model for sanitation in informal settlements. Specifically, the project seeks to find:

a)    An environmentally sustainable model which seeks to demonstrate to the State how to manage human waste without contaminating natural resources

b)   A model that is able to leverage resources from the State while at the same time utilizing community contributions for the development of a permanent sewer solution. The main innovation here is finding low-cost financing for sanitation upgrades. 

c)    A model that demonstrates that state investments for any trunk infrastructure targeted at the poor increases the integration of poor communities into the formal systems of the city.

More information about the proposed project is forthcoming. Please watch this space for more information.

In Tanzania, Reaching the Wider Community Through Improved Sanitation

By the Tanzanian Urban Poor Federation with the support of the Center for Community Initiatives (CCI)

Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania with an estimated population of 4 million people. 80% of its population is estimated to be living in informal settlements where people are living with inadequate access to services such as water, sanitation and poor housing. Due to extensive use of pit latrines associated with inadequate supply of clean and safe water and unhygienic pit emptying practices, informal settlements dwellers largely live in high risk of contracting diseases including cholera and diarrhea.

In their efforts to improve sanitation in Tanzania, particularly in Dar es Salaam city, the Tanzanian Urban Poor Federation initiated sanitation projects by providing micro loans for latrine improvement to its members. In 2011, federation members from Dar- es-Salaam organized an exchange visit to Malawi aimed at acquiring the knowledge from fellow federations on how they are managing loans. While in Malawi federation members learned that the Malawi federation is giving loans to both federation and non-federation members with the aim of making intervention at a wider scale to enable poor communities to improve their sanitation situation. In July 2011 initial loans were given to 10 non-federation members. It was based on an understanding that the majority of federation members are tenants who are not able to apply for toilet loans due to their land tenure status and furthermore sanitation problems affect entire communities regardless of their land tenure status and whether they are federation members or not.

Before issuing the loans to the initial 10 borrowers the process of loan provision started with the training of twelve technicians of whom two were men and ten women and strengthening the relationship with the local administration at Mtaa (settlement) level. The loans given to non-federation members are managed at two levels; the saving scheme (which identified the borrowers) and Mtaa leaders. These two parties are working in collaboration. The Mtaa leaders are the guarantors of loans and make follow-ups with non-federation members while the saving scheme, based at the same locality, ensures that the loan follow-ups are made and the repayment is done according to schedule.

The loan provision to non-federation members started as a pilot project and so far it has been very successful, as all the initial ten borrowers have finished repaying their loans before the agreed time. This success has led to the implementation of a second phase where another loan has been extended to 10 people in August 2012. In total 20 toilets have been constructed which serve 120 households and 250 people respectively.

Amongst the second phase of beneficiaries of the loans was Mr. Khatib Athuman, 60 years old who did not manage to hide his deep appreciation for accessing the loan for improving his toilet. Since 1996 Mr. Khatib who has a family of 7 people has been using a simple pit latrine constructed with lined old car tires and dilapidated iron sheets which did not offer privacy, had bad smell and the pit was overflowing. This exposed him and other family members to high health risks and embarrassment due to poor means of emptying which was done using tins by Mr. Khatib’s son. Because of limited space it was very hard for Mr. Khatib to access a place for digging a big pit for diverting the waste, as an alternative he was digging a small pit for emptying little waste just to make the room available for toilets use for another three to four days. During the rainy season the situation becomes worse and emptying occured more than three times per week. Mr. Khatib’s wife added that the situation of their toilet was very bad to the extent that it has affected the relationship with her grandchildren as they usually wish to come and spend days with them but because of the lack of a proper toilet they could not allow them to come with the fear of risking their health.

“My grand children could not visit us because of a bad latrine, even this coming Eid holiday they asked if they could come but we did not agree with them because of the latrine” -Asha, Mr. Khatib’s wife

Speaking during the handing over of toilet construction materials to 10 non-federation members at Keko Machungwa settlement, the representative of Temeke Municipal Health Officer Mrs. Rehema Sadick said, “lack of adequate sanitation has been one of the major challenge contributing to eruption of diseases such as cholera and diarrhea which leads to a loss of lives as well as income.” She insisted that the community should use this opportunity by accessing loans for improving their toilets and although the Municipal Council has limited financial resources they are ready to work with the federation through provision of technical support and mobilizing communities.

In total the amount of loans given to non-federation members is TZS 8,780,000 Tshs (USD$ 5487.5) in Dar es Salaam. More community members are expected to be reached with the federation through this initiative not only in Dar es Salaam but as well as in other regions where they have already started implementing sanitation initiatives.

The Keko Machungwa settlement has set a good example of community led initiatives in improving water and sanitation services by constructing 1 public toilet at the market, constructing 30 households toilet and drilling one borehole connected to three water points. The federation has also initiated toilet-emptying programmes using Gulper technology and the training of Hygiene promotion teams (PHAST teams) for community mobilization on improving hygiene practices.

The federation has also managed to convince some land lords to adopt eco-san technology in order to get rid of the challenges involved in emptying pit latrines including the issue of space for digging another pit as well as unhealthy manual emptying practices and the lack of road access.

These initiatives focus to bring the government down to the settlement level to provide resources and work with communities to scale up sanitation improvements in informal settlements and improving living conditions in general.

Waterborne | Water & Sanitation in Slovo Park, South Africa

Waterborne from Pretoria Picture Company Inc. on Vimeo.

**Cross posted from SA SDI Alliance Blog**