A Trip to the Third World

“Jaded Julie, please name the most serious environmental problem you can think of.”

“That’s easy, Curmudge. Global warming. At least that’s what everybody says.”

“Who is ‘everybody’?”

“The newspapers. The politicians. Well…everybody.”

“I’d like you to take an imaginary trip with me to a rural area of a third world country. Will you go?”

“As old as you are, I knew it was going to be imaginary. Okay, let’s go.”

“We’re here. That shack over there is where you’ll be staying.”

“Wow, it’s hot! What’s that horrible odor? It smells like a sewage treatment plant with a power failure. I hope those mosquitoes buzzing around my head aren’t carrying malaria. And if my ‘luxury villa’ (shack) has only one room, where’s the bathroom?”

“The ‘hanging latrine’ is right over there (1). It’s an outhouse with a rag door on 4-foot high stilts. There’s no seat, but there is a ditch underneath. It doesn’t flush, but in the monsoon season the rain carries everything farther down the ditch. One walks up a rickety sloping ladder to get to it; if you lose your balance on the way up, the result will be—to say the least—memorable. Oh, and by the way, you’ll be sharing this ‘facility’ with those 500 people who are staring at us, and you’ll share your one-room ‘villa’ with seven of them.”

“Where’s the toilet paper?”

“Don’t ask.”

“And where do I wash my hands?”

“In that stream over there; see where the ditch runs into it. It’s the same place you’ll get water for cooking and drinking. I hope you brought your own soap. Or if you want somewhat cleaner water, there’s a well five miles down the road.”

“Please, Curmudge, get me out of here! I’ve seen (and smelled) enough.”

“We’re back home, Julie. Appleton never looked or smelled better. After experiencing our imaginary trip, you may be interested in these statistics (2):
· 40 per cent of the world’s population do not have access to a basic latrine. That’s 2.6 billion people who don’t even have a bucket or box (3).
· Up to 80 per cent of illnesses and five million deaths per year in the developing world are related to sanitation and water.
· 4,500 children die every day from diarrheal illnesses.
· Every year more than 3.5 million children do not live to celebrate their fifth birthday because of diarrhea and pneumonia.”

“Curmudge, I couldn’t stand spending a day in the place we just visited, yet those people must spend their whole lifetime there. I’d better revisit my earlier thought about global warming. Let’s see…the world’s leaders—even those from developing nations—are talking about spending billions of dollars per year on an uncertain solution to an uncertain problem that might occur at an uncertain time in the future. Contrast that with spending orders of magnitude less money on known solutions to the known problems of dirty water and inadequate sanitation that will kill 4,500 children today. The everybodies that I mentioned earlier need to re-think their priorities. I have certainly changed mine.”

“Jaded Julie, you are indeed a gem.”

(1) WaterAid The State of the Worlds Toilets 2007.
http://www.wateraid.org/documents/the_state_of_the_worlds_toilets_2007_1.pdf

(2) Dickson, B. and Salmon, B. Looking Back at International Year of Sanitation.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9791&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=1

(3) George, R. Nowhere to Go. The Rotarian—January 2010.
http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews/TheRotarian/Pages/toilets1001.aspx