By: Catarina Mavila Magaia, Georgina Pagesptit, Ilundi Cabral, Sandra Roque, Beira Team Researchers, at COWI, June 2021. Photos by Januario Magaia, Inview Lda, 2020.
Between December 2020 and February 2021, a “Sanitation Festival” was held in the Mozambican city of Beira with the aim of promoting good sanitation practices as part of the Project OVERDUE “Tackling the Sanitation taboo across urban Africa”. Several radio broadcasts and debates were organized by the local Mega-FM radio station, bringing together representatives from the government, water supply and sanitation service providers, academia, civil society organizations and citizens. Below are some issues highlighted during the Sanitation Festival we found interesting.
Latrines ill adapted to the topography and climate of Beira
The impact of cyclones and floods recurrently hitting the city of Beira is more visible and dramatic in off-grid neighborhoods that are not connected to the sewer system, which lack drainage ditches, have limited water supply and poor solid waste collection. During the rainy season black water, waste and other residues contaminate both drinking water and underground water sources which in turn causes water-borne diseases, generating a major public health problem (cholera, diarrhea and malaria, among other).
Climatic conditions, a very high water table combined with frequent flooding due to heavy rains and a lack of drainage ditches mean that septic tanks and latrines are not suitable sanitation solutions for the city of Beira. However, due to the lack of resources these solutions are frequently used. In addition, the cost of building latrines is very high and inaccessible for many families, due to the type of material needed to resist groundwater in the rainy season.
Citizens often left to themselves to confront the gaps in the drainage system
There is a need for drainage ditches in the city. During the rainy season, the water has nowhere to go, the streets are flooded and this hinders the mobility of both adults and children.
Before the rainy season, some families dig ditches to allow the water to pass in order to protect their houses. Despite this, rainwater invades residences because the efforts are individual and not combined across neighborhoods. There is also no coordinated effort between municipal authorities and citizens to create a system that guarantees traffic safety and water drainage, security against flooding and consistent support to the embankment of streets. When infrastructure solutions to drain rainwater are implemented, they benefit only some parts of the city.
Some residents requested assistance from the municipal authorities to respond to the serious flooding problems but received no answer. This, on the one hand, leads them to think that there are privileged neighborhoods, where influential people reside and assistance is provided, whereas neighborhoods with poorer citizens and influence are left to their own devices. On the other hand, the Autonomous Sanitation Services of Beira argues that it faces technical limitations and insufficient equipment to meet the needs of all residents, which makes it sometimes necessary to interrupt one job to meet another emergency elsewhere.
Deficient waste management with a strong impact on public health
Waste management is also a key concern for Beira residents. Not all neighborhoods have containers for garbage disposal, both because some unplanned, more informal neighborhoods lack access routes wide enough for waste collection trucks, and because waste collection is irregular. In the rainy season, uncollected waste spreads across the streets and is often deposited out of the containers. In some neighborhoods, residents also use waste to landfill the streets and prevent erosion.
Waste contaminates water and is a serious vehicle for the transmission of diseases. In various parts of the city garbage attracts flies and mosquitoes, which transmit various types of diseases such as malaria, diarrhea, and cholera.
Building and maintaining rainwater drainage and waste management are the responsibility of the Beira Municipal Council, and so is the promotion of public health. Even if citizens adhere to preventive malaria measures such as the use of mosquito nets on windows and beds, if the issue of mosquito breeding is not tackled, the problem will not be solved.
Public toilets and specific gendered needs
Public toilets in Beira City are not prepared to respond to the needs and differences induced by gender, age and disabilities. The situation is chaotic, especially in market spaces (where facilities are shared), but also in institutions such as universities, where women lack clean toilets with water.
Women have a different biological condition than men. Those responsible for these bathrooms must instruct people, especially men, because in the same way that they pee on trees, they take their penis out in bathrooms and deposit urine on toilet sits or latrine slabs. When women arrive and sit to take care of their needs, they can catch several diseases such as urinary tract infections. It is important that toilets are washed after use so that the next person who enters find them clean. This attitude should not only be for public bathrooms, but also in domestic ones.
Regarding the use toilet paper, it is important to put a bucket in order for it to be discarded, as many people put it in the toilet, and this can create clogged situations. The radio broadcasts made it clear that some public toilets have neither water nor toilet paper.
When girls experience their first menstrual periods, guardians, mothers, aunts, sisters or older people instruct them how to use the sanitary napkins. Those who are unable to buy sanitary pads can teach girls to use cloths , and how to wash and iron these materials to kill microbes that can harm women’s health. In schools it would be good to have toilets separated by gender so that girls can have access to sanitary pads in the toilets, as well as water and space to wash the reusable ones. It is also important to educate girls never to throw pads into latrines after using them to avoid clogging.
Conclusion
The sanitation festival showed the dramatic situation of sanitation in Beira, particularly in suburban neighborhoods that are not connected to the sewage system, and face challenges in water drainage, waste collection and constrains to building and using improved latrines and other safe sanitation infrastructures.
Social and structural inequalities in sanitation, on the one hand, are created by the Municipality’s inability to provide basic sanitation services, on the other hand because of the lack of space both for the construction of ditches, drainage and garbage collection in the neighborhoods. Although waste is negative and harmful to public health, the citizens of Beira try to find the positive side in it, reusing it to prevent erosion problems.
In relation to the deficient drainage system, it would be ideal for municipal services and residents to work in a coordinated manner in creating rainwater drainage systems to prevent flooding in the neighborhoods, as individual efforts are not sufficient to solve problems. This could also help to tackle the citizens’ dissatisfied perception that sanitation problems are solved only in some privileged neighborhoods.