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The private yet very important room! The toilet is one room that every human being — regardless of race, social status or gender — can never avoid. To most people, visiting the washroom requires high degree of secrecy. Yet, often, this secrecy is seldom given priority especially in public places.
The private yet very important room! The toilet is one room that every human being — regardless of race, social status or gender — can never avoid. To most people, visiting the washroom requires high degree of secrecy. Yet, often, this secrecy is seldom given priority especially in public places.
Mobile toilets and social equality
In January 2007, the World Social Forum was held in Africa for the first time, and Kenya was privileged to host the event. Thousands of delegates from across the world came together to put social justice, international solidarity, gender equality, peace and defence of the environments on the world’s agenda.
As the event kicked off, the Nairobi City Council offered the public mobile toilets to ease congestion at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) washrooms. These toilets were large enough to accommodate even the large-bodied. To women, these toilets were suitable too, with facilities such as mirrors and sanitary disposal bins present.
“When I saw the mobile toilets, I was curious to experiment. The room was spacious and user-friendly. Being a lady and conscious of my looks, I spent some time re-doing my make up and hair. This was a relief since no one was at the door knocking to urge me to speed up. This was not the Nairobi I am used to,” says Lillian Njogu.
Njogu added that these toilets were for free, unlike the renovated toilets in various points of the city centre where one has to pay a fee in order to use the facility.
Are Those Telephone Booths?
At the Kasarani Complex where the summit was being held, the mobile toilets were present. But alas! They looked like telephone booths. Curiosity got the better of us and we went ahead to investigate.
“On entering ‘the booth’, I was welcomed by the hot temperature inside. The facilities looked like toys and I was even afraid of using them for fear of breaking some. I went ahead and did my thing but more surprises were in store for me. I couldn’t locate the cistern handle to flash the toilet. I began pressing anything that I thought could enable me to flash the toilet. To my relief, upon engaging a gear-like part, the toilet flashed. Waooh!,” said Lillian.
But that was not all.
“My next worry was how to wash my hands according to some lessons I got from my Home Science lessons in primary school.
I tried my luck to no avail. The temperatures were not friendly to me and I had to act fast and get out of there.”
So she says she just swallowed my pride and walked out to one of the attendants manning the toilets and asked for help. She
was apparently shocked that someone didn’t know how to wash their hands. “Go press the black thing below the sink with
your foot,” was her reply. Lillian went, and to her profound shock, when she pressed an accelerator-like pedal and the
action pumped water to the taps, she was able to wash my hands.
The woes of the big-bodied
So what about the big-bodied people? How would they use ‘the booth’ which was not spacious enough? Would they do it with
their heads outside? Would they sit on the toilet and break? Or would they be left out from using the toilets?
To kill curiosity, we decided to interview some of the people we considered big-bodied and whom we thought could not go
through the door. This is what some had to say:
“Whaaaaaat? With my size???? No way! The minute I opened the door and saw its size from inside, I could not even dare try
to use them,” said a delegate from Nigeria.
“If one has no option, you have to really squeeze yourself if need be. But I would prefer not to use them either. The ones
at the KICC were far much better compared to these,” said Iolanda, a delegate from Catalunya in Spain.
“Samahani dada, kwa kweli hamna uwezo wa kuzitumia kwa mtu mnene kama mimi. Bila shaka inanibidi nitumie zilizomo ndani
ya complex lakini hata hivyo tunashukuru sana,” said a Tanzanian delegate. (Sorry sister. Honestly, there is no way people of my size can use these toilets. We will have to do with the ones inside the Complex, but we appreciate anyway.)
And what of those in their countries? Did they have complaints about the size of the toilets?
‘Heee! Mimi hata niliona kama bahati sababu huko mtaani tumezoea kulipa. (Heee! I considered this a big privilege considering that we are used to paying for the facility in our towns.) So I cant complain, but in future, they will have to improve on the size to cater for all people regardless of their size,” added another delegate from Tanzania.
“Well, I am very impressed with the forum organizers because for one, the toilets are very clean and they could afford to cater for all these people. It is a miracle!,” concluded a satisfied delegate.
[Magdaline Nkando wrote this with inputs from Lillian Njogu, Tabitha Mbinya, Dickson Muriuki and Diana Amollo. Nkando is with the Arid Lands Information Network-Eastern Africa (ALIN-EA), AAYMCA Building, Ground Floor, Along State House Crescent, Off State House Road, P.O. Box 10098-00100 G.P.O., Nairobi, Kenya. Tel: +254 20 2731557, Fax: +254 20 2737813, E-mail: info@alin.or.ke Website: http://www.alin.or.ke]
