Africa: Tapping into the Sanitation Challenge

In my previous blog post , CTLS and PGISM were highlighted as being fascinating and growing solutions to ‘The Unmentionable’, through which communal knowledge and voices could be both seen and heard. Having spent time reflecting on the post's ending, however, the question that still remained unclear and unanswered, is whose voice is really being heard in the implementation of change? Even more importantly, whose voices need to be heard and are not? The crucial nature of these questions has led me to consider the gendered nature of water and sanitation in Africa. Specifically, it’s led me to the shocking exploration of Gender Based Violence (GBV) in slum geographies, where GBV is defined as “violence that occurs as a result of the normative role expectations associated with each gender, along with the unequal power relationships… within the context of a specific society” ( Bloom, 2008 :14 ). How might we imagine this type of violence emerging in sanitary practices? Perhaps the...

Having discussed WTD in my previous upload , I want to return to the final thought I made within it. Specifically, is it enough to celebrate sanitation only once a year, or do we need an approach that redirects our attention, and therefore our solutions, to the everyday? To answer this, I want to draw upon the questions I identified through the Akan case study  and explore the areas of Community Total led Sanitation (CTLS) and Participatory GIS Mapping (PGISM) that have captured my interest. Everyday Sanitation and CLTS Synthesising the lessons that emerged from Akan , I think it seems obvious that to make sanitary progress we must first accept that sanitation is socially awkward and marginalising. Only then can we actively dismantle these culturally conditioned perspectives, and purposefully act in ways that brings sanitation into the everyday. In other words, acknowledge local taboos exist and then respectfully flush them away. This sounds straightforward, but how might we go ab...