Bathroom Solutions

By Mwizenge S. Tembo, Ph. D.

Emeritus Professor of Sociology.

The first 13 years of my life up to 57 years ago, I lived in the villages and rural schools in the remote Eastern Province of Zambia in Southern Africa where there were no indoor flash toilets. You might not want to read this article any further if you are eating, about to eat or you have a weak stomach. I have lived predominantly in the cities in Zambia and the United States during the last 57 years navigating between use of the flash toilet of the city and rural village toilets or commonly known as out houses in the United States and latrines in the British colonial Northern Rhodesia of the 1950s and 60s. At one point 60 years ago in my rural village, toilets did not even exist. All villages now have toilets. Recently, I spent 2 weeks at my Mwizenge Sustainable Model village in rural Lusaka in Zambia sleeping in my own hut. I was confronted with and contemplated the challenges of using the rural village outhouses which I helped design and directed the building of.

History of the Latrine

I was attending the Dutch Mission Tamanda Boys Boarding Upper School north of Fort Jameson (now Chipata) in the remote Eastern Province of Zambia in 1965. I was 11 years old and in my 6th grade classroom one morning when we heard a loud alarming campus wide commotion. The whole of my class of 40 students and 3 other classrooms emptied of students as everyone scrambled toward one the 6 teaching staff houses’ toilets where a crowd had already gathered. The teacher’s 3-year-old little girl had fallen into the wide toilet hole pit and could be heard crying from deep inside the dark outhouse hole. Some of the taller 17-year-old classmates were urgently summoned to retrieve the girl from deep in the dark filth.

Fortunately for the little girl, a number of the outhouse floor wooden beam floor supports had decayed and collapsed inside the shallow pit. The wooden poles had crossed each other which inadvertently created blockages which broke the girls’ fall. She was wedged just 3 feet below the hole and crying instead of being at the bottom of a ten-foot-deep toilet. One of the taller boys knelt on one knee to reach for the girl with his long arm and lifted her out amidst cheers. She was more frightened as she was not physically hurt. Her grateful mother carried her in her arms and scrabbed her with some clean soap and water. This incident exposed all about the perils of rural village outhouses at the time. The hole of the toilet should not have been big enough for a small child to fall through it.

Use of Outhouse

A friend of mine who was also a lecturer or professor at University of Zambia confided in me that when he visited the village in rural Zambia, he made sure he emptied all his pockets including keys before squatting straddling the hole. In my home village many years ago, I took this advice further. I removed my shoes, my trousers, emptied my pockets of my wallet which had a bunch of credit cards and my Virginia Driver’s license, and my rental car keys.

After living in the United States for so long, I find it a challenge to use the village outhouse for long periods. According to the CDC, I might be among the 41.9% of adults in the United States who are obese. Therefore, I am unable to squat for too long on the village toilet when I am living at the Mwizenge Sustainable model village. Squatting for too long becomes a further challenge if there are too many not just the small houseflies, but especially the large green B-52 green bombers recklessly zipping around.

Outhouse Social Etiquette

There are also the challenges of social etiquette when using the village toilet. One of the most difficult is how do you tell if someone else is already occupying the special house at that same moment you want to urgently employ its services. If you are inside, you cough loudly to signal to whoever is approaching that you are already inside. Both men and women in the traditional Zambian customs have to make sure neither their mother-in-law nor father-in-law are occupying the joint at the time they would like to use it. You need to gather good intelligence before you decide to use the toilet. This problem may be solved by having more than one toilet.

In most cases in rural areas, the toilets may only have an opaque screen structure and not an actual door that you can use to close the toilet. This is how as you are busy using the toilet, often chickens have a tendency to walk in to check you out. When the chickens see you, they emit special alarm sounds.

Chicken one: “Chuc-ru- ru- ru- !!!!! (We are surprised you are here!!!)

Chicken two: “Chuc – ru – ru- ru- ru!!!! (We are scared!!!!!!)

Rooster Deep voice: “Cle – kwe -kwe- kwe!!(Man! This is really scary!!!!)

Village chickens make similar sounds when they see a snake or strangers walking around the village.

Since I cannot squat for long any more due to my age, especially weight and poor physical shape, I have sought relief by asking the village carpenter to make me a special movable wooden gizmo box that makes it possible for me to sit like I do when I use a flash toilet.