Why Why Why?

Why Water and Sanitation?

Hi and welcome to the first post of my blog! 

This post will be about why I've chosen this particular theme for my blog and some of the ideas that I've found very interesting in the  papers from the reading list so far.

What is sanitation?

According to the Cambridge dictionary, sanitation is 'the systems for taking dirty water and other waste products away from buildings in order to protect people's health'. 

Sanitation is recognized as a human right by the UN General Assembly yet not everyone has access to adequate sanitation.

Why the theme?

Personal Experience

Well, the majority of my childhood was spent living in Mauritius where we had to boil our tap water and let it cool before drinking. I remember in my time at secondary school here in the UK, I was made aware of the fact that the water from my tap here had been treated and was safe to drink without having to boil (and also that limescale was the result of hard water and has to be removed unless you like crunchy tea). I was very impressed with this fact because I finally understood why, when my cousins visited me on holiday in Mauritius, they did the 'unthinkable' and drank straight from the tap. They contracted a diarrheal disease afterwards too unfortunately and it was not pretty.

Interest from readings

In addition, when I came across Damkjaer and Taylor's (2017) article where it is explained that water scarcity is low freshwater availability relative to demand and that there is an "absence of a relationship between ‘water scarcity’ and ‘access to safe water’" I was really intrigued. I found myself continuously thinking about how such a crucial aspect of water availability (the quality itself) could be overlooked. After all, what good is water if it can't be used? Are we underestimating scarcity once we consider access to safe water?

This was emphasized in Nayebare et al.'s (2020) paper where in Lukaya, Uganda, water comes from ground-water from shallow wells and unprotected springs. There was no sewer network or wastewater treatment facility and commonly reported morbidity was from Malaria (81%) and diarrheal diseases (19%). Moreover, if the water didn't contain diarrheal diseases, there was the issue of acidity where nitrate concentrations were well above the WHO's recommendation of 50mg/L, making water very difficult to drink and use.

There was also the mention of pit latrines being emptied by either digging another pit or transferring faecal matter to other pits or how runoff during the rainy season was used as a flushing mechanism contributing to contamination of water sources.

From these, it became clear to me that Water and Sanitation and their issues are inextricably linked and complex. More importantly, however, it was more interesting to me that there are people in places like Lukaya that are being denied a human right.

What to expect?

In my blog I aim to respond to online articles and discuss both issues and solutions regarding water and sanitation using regional/specific examples as I learn and come across new things. The use of specific countries/areas rather than generalizing  'Africa' helps me to not fall into the trap of seeing Africa as a country in need of saving from the west but rather a diverse continent with different unique countries, cultures and contexts as Wainaina's entertaining article reminds us. 

This (the continent): 

 A map of Africa with labelled countries. source 

not this (the 'country'):

A map of Africa without labelled countries. source