Kaitaia invited to build a toilet

The first community toilet Christian Simon helped build, in Mankwatze village, 20 years ago is still in use. Photos / supplied

Even allowing for aging (and failing) sewerage systems, toilets are not something that many New Zealanders worry about. It was a different story in some parts of the world according to Mangawhai architect Christian Simon, who told Transition Town Kaitaia that lack of toilets was costing many people their lives.

He invited the organisation to help build toilets in Ghana - Build a toilet, save lives - having lived in African communities where people were dying for the want of something that his audience took for granted.

Simon had recently returned from Ghana, where more than 20 million people could not afford a toilet of any type, so were reduced to defecating outdoors, a practice that was unsafe, unhygienic, and contaminated the rivers and wells from which most people took their drinking water. Contaminated water caused the deaths of more than 60,000 pre-school children in Ghana alone every year as the result of diarrhoea, cholera and typhus.

He had been involved in several community-initiated projects to build toilets in different parts of Africa, each project using a simple, waterless design and built by local people using local building materials for family groups or schools. The only materials that had to be purchased for each toilet were concrete for the floors and iron for the roofs.

The toilets were based on a low maintenance hot-composting system that processed "humanure" into fertiliser that could be used on non-food crops. Once completed, the toilets were a highly valued community asset, so those built 20 years ago were still in use and very well maintained.

Simon was about to return to Ghana in July to help with the largest community toilet-building project yet. The fishing township of Busua had a population of 5000 and was also a popular tourist destination. Its mayor and council had asked him to help run a project to build 1000 toilets for the township. Locals would help design a range of amenities for different situations (schools, marketplaces, homes), then build them using local materials and methods.

The concrete and iron needed for each toilet would cost $250, far beyond the means of Busua families, and a Give-a-Little page had been opened for donations. (In five months it had raised just $775).

He told Kaitaia Transition Town that community toilets delivered many benefits, not the least being "way fewer" child deaths, improved safety for women and children, higher school attendance for girls, and safer drinking water for all, and he exhorted his audience to contribute towards the cost of even one toilet.

"If 25 people in Kaitaia give even $10 each, that's a toilet that will literally save lives," he said.

Donations can be made via https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/save-childrens-lives-in-ghana-with-toilets