Bathroom problems

    In Kenya you  cannot take having a clean sit down toilet with toilet paper and being able to flush for granted. Everywhere we went, toilets were a major issue. As an older woman, I especially feel for the women who do not have easily accessible clean and safe toilets. In most communities we visited with Unbound, there was one toilet for a whole housing community. I never looked inside them ,but they looked very unsanitary and scary. I was also told about people just using plastic bags and then tossing them. This is called a "flying toilet."
     I visited a school for children and the only toilet was a hole in the ground for both boys and girls.

The issue was made more personal when I was on a long van ride and asked the driver to stop. We went to a gas station. The owner gave a key to a toilet that  had a padlock on  a heavy metal door. When I went inside there was no lock and it was just a cement slab. Nothing else. I came out and said I refused to use it. Only then did he reluctantly give me a second key to another section that had a padlock on. He said they rarely opened it. There, by the grace of God, was a sit down toilet! When I visited the family of a sponsored child, his mother said the only toilet for the community recently collapsed and they had to walk to a nearby church to use the toilet there.I imagine that would be a problem at night.In the United States, we take for granted that at almost every rest stop or gas station, we will find adequate toilets.
    I found there are many groups on the internet working to get better toilets. Several are: Flushforgood, American Standard, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Toilet Yanga, WaterAid, World Toilet Organization  and Water for People, just to name a few. Here is a link to a video about a low-cost alternatives:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbWf8Qpyt-c.

Here are some images of what it looks like:

Also, World Toilet Day is November 19th every year.http://www.worldtoiletday.info/