It is never an easy task convincing a household or a community to stop going to the toilet in the open (a practice known as ‘open defecation’). There are often many barriers to stopping this age-old practice – and Kakwo, a small community in Nigeria’s Cross River State, was no exception to this.
Prior to United Purpose’s programme, Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion in Nigeria (RUSHPIN), households in Kakwo practised open defecation. Reasons for this included tradition and also difficult mountainous terrain, which made digging out toilet pits very challenging.
However, as a result of RUSHPIN, United Purpose supported local government facilitators to run a ‘triggering’ session with community members. This involved giving people information about how human excrement can contaminate and cause disease, ‘triggering’ feelings of disgust. Rather than pressurising the community to end open defecation, this approach puts power in the hands of the community, enabling them to make well-informed decisions and lead their own initiatives.
The training caused the people of Kakwo to put an end to open defecation and build toilets for themselves. Thanks to the support of community leaders and ‘hygiene champions’, the community was declared Open Defecation Free in 2015.
Household member constructing an improved pit latrine after triggering in 2015
Today, six years down the line, the 61 households in this community have sustained their Open Defecation Free status. Not only this, but they have moved up the hygiene and sanitation ladder by upgrading their initial pit toilets to ‘pour flush toilets’ (a type of toilet that is flushed manually by pouring water from a bucket).
Households in Kakwo upgrading from pit latrines to pour flush toilets
Living in an Open Defecation Free community has brought enormous benefits to the people of Kakwo. Health improvements are widely reported, with children under the age of five no longer suffering from regular bouts of diarrhoea and other related diseases that kept them away from school and their parents away from work.
For this community, there is no going back.
The completed toilet improved latrine constructed in Kakwo
Written by Julius AWU, State Technical Officer, Cross River State, and WASH Focal Point for United Purpose Nigeria
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