No toilet, no wedding

Kenya-based video journalist Ruud Elmendorp recently produced this short trailer (on behalf of Waste.NL) on a young woman that refuses to marry her boyfriend – until his family builds a proper toilet:

The story is about a boy who is in love with the daughter of a school teacher. Much to the dismay of his father, she refuses because she finds their toilet unusable and refused to have to go to the bush for defecation.

The women’s group has filed a number of complaints due to poor sanitation and present this to the village chief, incidentally the uncle of the boy. He is quite amazed by this and decides to call the government sanitation adviser.

After an animated session with the villagers and the chief, many decide to go for suitable toilets. The film ends happily with the girl accepting the marriage proposal as the sanitation issues have been solved.

Ruud regularly produces interesting video material from East Africa that we have also featured on AfriGadget, btw.

Documentary on World’s Toilet Crisis

Rob of i360/Current TV recently informed me of this documentary by Vanguard correspondent Adam Yamaguchi who traveled to India, Singapore and Indonesia to understand why people don’t use toilets and what’s being done to end the practice of open defecation:

“An estimated 2.6 billion people, about 40% of the world’s population, have no access to toilets and defecate anywhere they can. As a result, more than 2 million people — including 1.5 million children — die from complications of chronic diarrhea.

When human waste isn’t contained or flushed down the toilet, it’s everywhere — in streets, open fields and, most dangerously, in the very water people drink. Adam investigates how countries are trying to solve an epidemic that few people want to talk about — the world’s toilet crisis.”

This documentary was aired on CurrentTV in September 2010 and has since generated quite a few interesting comments. Also includes footage on the work of the World Toilet Organization (WTO) via Jack Sim, as well as a light introduction to Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS).