Anecdote from the Field

We met a gentleman during a visit to Baibaba Basti in Bhubaneswar who was one of the slum’s original residents. He’s lived there for over 25 years and has been progressive in trying to get amenities and facilities for the community as a whole. One of his major successes was getting the government to sanction 3 toilet booths for the community.

A few months after these toilet booths were built, the community realized that they needed to build at least 3 more, and proceeded to build them while extending the septic tank and creating runoffs.

He explained the process to us as we walked through the community. I asked how they learned to make toilets and the conversation went off into a direction that was, well, not expected, to say the least.

Hearing the question, a puzzled look came over his face, he shrugged his shoulders and explained that, when ‘your body gives you the signal that you need to defecate, you just know how to do it; nobody needs to learn these things.’

A moment of silence.

And then, it struck me. He had misunderstood my question given his minimal understanding of Hindi and my limited use of ‘local words’ such as ‘latrine’. This to me meant the space and to him the activity; therein lay the problem. A few minutes of explaining and gesticulating later, we learnt that they were taught about the science of building toilets from masons that living in the community.