Happy Toilet, healthy life

November 19 has been proclaimed by the United Nations as World Toilet Day and every year on this day I think of the small village in South India where I was allowed to spend a week in the summer of 2004.

My friend Jayaseelan had invited me to be a guest in his family. We had met at the Jesuit DACA, the “Dr. Ambedkar Cultural Academy” in Madurai. He took part in a training course there to become a leader of rural “Evening Schools” for Dalits and I was allowed to get to know his work during a project trip of the German Jesuit Mission. And so I went the approximately 75 km from Madurai three hours over dusty-dry roads via Sattur to E.Muthulingapuram. When I think of my friend’s home village, I am still filled with great gratitude for this indescribable hospitality that accompanied me for a whole week. Not only with Jayaseelan and his wonderful family, but with every encounter. Every day, for example, I had to have breakfast several times, – because whenever we entered a house, there was food – the worldwide symbol of hospitality. Even if there was almost nothing in the mud houses and there was a lack of any supplies, there was always rice with masala. I was particularly fond of the children who always accompanied me on my way through the village. I was allowed to teach them a few words of English at school and tell them about Europe. On the second day at school, I asked for a toilet, and everyone was embarrassed because there simply wasn’t one. One had to walk quite a long way to a dam where one could do one’s emergency toilet. The teacher told me, after we had become friends that the lack of toilets was a big problem for the village and also for the school. The children often avoided going to the dam, the latrines in the households were not properly organized, and infections were thus commonplace.

Back in Germany, I could not let go of the need to help in any way. We collected money and organized the construction of a toilet facility through the Jesuit network. After some time, Jayaseelan sent me a message from an Internet café: The large toilet house including a latrine had now been built right next to the school and a stone plaque at the entrance read: “Donated by Siegfried and friends”.

Someday I would like to see this plaque on “my little toilet house,” perhaps on World Toilet Day, when attention is drawn to the common cause: 40 percent of the world’s population still lacks adequate sanitation and 2.5 billion people lack assured access to clean and healthy water. The World Toilet Summit in Bangkok was held under the motto “Happy Toilet, Healthy Life”. This also applies to my village in southern India, which I always think of on November 19.