The main objective of the sanitation festival event was to launch the OVERDUE Research Project in Mwanza City through engagements with local stakeholders in the private & public sectors as well as civil society. At the centre of the festival lay also the need for awareness raising, especially to bring up the often overlooked issues that concern sanitation, gender, taboo and everyday life challenges in low income communities.

By Richard Prosper, Wilbard Kombe, Tim Ndezi, Festo Dominick Makoba, Sheila Juma Salum, Pascale Hofmann, Mwanza Team Researchers, at Ardhi University, the Centre for Community Initiatives, and University College London, April 2021.

Representatives from the key sectors involved in sanitation issues were given an opportunity to present their view/ideas and proposals on how to address existing challenges. Presenters used graphics-with text- posters, poems, traditional dance & drumming ngoma^[1], and verbally expressed their concerns on sanitation conditions in Mwanza and specifically in their localities.

Presenters included residents of Mabatini (an informal settlement), MWAUWASA, Mwanza Federation of the urban poor, school children from Mabatini primary school and Ngoma group from Mwanza city. Ultimately the aim was to move sanitation up the agenda, discuss challenges at various levels and how to address them. Also, the idea was to bring local communities and officials involved in sanitation activities together to share concerns on sanitation.

Mabatini sub-ward is located in Nyamagana municipality and comprises largely low income informal housing. The bulk of it being on the steep hills. In 2020, it had an estimated population of about 35,000 people.

Public discussion session: Questions and Answers

The presentations and messages from participants were followed by public discussions around the following key questions:

• Why have many residents in Mabatini not improved their toilets/latrines?
• What has to be done to get the residents and other people from surrounding communities to improve their toilets/latrines?
• What taboos surround sanitation issues in Mwanza?
• What comes first, when one thinks about having their own house: Toilet or building the house? Why?
• Who is affected most by poor sanitation? Why?

Concerns

A series of concerns were raised and publicly voiced during this celebration. These included:

• The geographical location of some housing areas including Mabatini Ward is rocky and hilly. This makes it difficult to excavate deep pits; most residents dig only shallow pits which do not last long. Moreover, most Mabatini residents are poor hence they cannot afford the cost of building decent toilets. The lack of piped water supply to the hilly areas further compounds the sanitation problem.
• There is scope for MWAUWASA and the Tanzanian Federation of the urban poor to assist in extending simplified sewer technology to Mabatini so that residents living in the hilly areas can connect their pits to the sewer network. However, modalities for reducing connection costs are necessary so as to make the simplified sewer system affordable.
• There are traditions (taboos) among some ethnic groups in Mwanza, which restrain fathers or mothers in-law from sharing toilets with their daughters/sons in-law. However, this tradition is slowly disappearing as communities find it difficult to provide more toilets to accommodate this. Also, with increasing immigration of people from other socio-cultural backgrounds and inter-tribal marriages, the tradition is likely to disappear.
• Normally girls and women shy away from discussing private hygiene matters in public (during menstruation). This is particularly in cases where discussions involve matters of sanitation such as menstruation, public hygiene, sanitation and so on.
• Lack of land where pit latrines and sewer pipes can be installed is a challenge especially in hilly areas, primarily because every square meter is owned by an individual and there are areas designated for future installation of basic community services. The rocky landform further complicates access to land.

School art exhibition & competition: Good & bad toilet facilities

Six students were invited to prepare sketches of toilets expressing what they would consider good or bad/inappropriate toilet facilities. Three drew poor and unhygienic toilets and the others sketched out preferred or good toilets. Each of them also demonstrated the effects of the poor upkeep of toilets, including flies contaminating food, bad odour and overall poor living environment.

The key messages from the exhibition by the school pupils include:

• the need of hygiene education;
• collective efforts to improve sanitation by the community;
• challenges of poor sanitation facilities for schoolgirls and sanitation taboos related to menstruation and personal/public hygiene.
• They also noted that informed children (like them) could play an important role advocating for the need to improve toilets among their households and neighbours.

The sanitation festival confirmed a number findings & messages:

1. Poor sanitation is a real problem and a threat to public health in Mwanza and beyond (i.e. Lake Victoria is likely to be contaminated) if the problem is left unattended;
2. There are concerns and enthusiasm among the general public and private sector alike that action in sanitation challenges is long overdue;
3. The Festival provided an open platform that can facilitate collaboration during field studies and subsequent collective action;
4. An increased monthly water bill from MWAUWASA due to the service charge for sewer services is a concern which might discourage poorer households from connecting to the simplified sewer system;
5. The cost of building a decent toilet that can be connected to the simplified sewer system or any other form of sewer system is generally high, and unaffordable by poorer households on the hills. This includes costs of building and materials required to improve latrines such as pipes and cement.
6. Sanitation practices including cleaning and provision of water are largely undertaken by women. This is the situation even in the hills where there is no piped water supply.  In public (open) discussions, women generally tend to hide this reality arguing that these activities are responsibilities which are equally shared between women and men.
7. Due to the lack of facilities, women, schoolgirls and people with disabilities are disproportionately affected by poor sanitation services. For instance, some schoolgirls do not go to school during menstrual periods.
8. School children are critical stakeholders who can be instrumental in mobilisation and sanitation campaigns (they can bring to fire/ public notice sensitive issues which many adults shy away from
9. There are high hopes/ expectations among the local community that MWAUWASA can and ought to take action to address sanitation challenges in Mabatini

[1] Ngoma refers to a performance expressed through dancing, drumming and singing, it is a presentation of thoughts, emotions and inner-feelings through bodily movement and verbal communication.

The Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) organized a sanitation tour on the theme: ‘Just Sanitation Across African Cities in Freetown’ to celebrate World Toilet Day on November, 19^th 2020. In the context of the OVERDUE project, the ‘Sanitation Festival’ was a way to celebrate sanitation actors and their vital role, while achieving our objectives of supporting actors and institutions who keep communities healthy and documenting the practices around sanitation. It is about taking action to tackle sanitation crisis and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6: Water and Sanitation for all by 2030.

By: Ibrahim Bakarr Bangura, Sulaiman Foday Kamara, Braima Koroma, Robin Bloch, Freetown Team Researchers, June 2021

On the sanitation tour, we visited three informal settlements – Crab Town, Kolleh Town and Gray Bush (CKG), Colbot and Portee-Rokupa. These settlements are located along the coastal areas affected by overcrowding and insanitary conditions, which pose a high risk of disease, with great prospects of serving as hubs of its transmission.

For example, the inclusion of the FCC in the preparatory process of sanitation tour gave them the opportunity to publicize the ‘Sanitation Hotline 8244’, to which residents can reach out to signal waste and faecal sludge issues. It is hoped that the publicity made will make the sanitation department of the FCC to be more efficient in their response to urgent sanitation-related issues reported by the public across the city.

This is the first time we are seeing a celebration of this nature.We are so happy that you have come and see the realities of the sanitation challenges we are faced with in this community.
– Tribal Chief, Colbot

The major findings emerging from the sanitation festival tour include:

• Insanitary conditions are a real problem and a threat to public health particularly in informal settlements and market areas. It is observed to be an infection hotspot for women and girls due to lack of access to safe sanitation facilities.
• At the city scale, investment in sanitation infrastructure and services is a major challenge.
• Sanitation practices including cleaning and provision of water is the utmost responsibility of the women and girls. Yet they are rarely paid for their work, acknowledged, or included as sanitation stakeholders and providers.
• Sanitation taboos related to menstruation and personal hygiene are a challenge.
• There is a lack of community initiatives to self-organize in improving sanitary conditions both at the household and community levels in precarious informal settlements.
• Households without toilets are more likely to use shared toilets, but they do not have ownership in terms of decision on its use, operation or improvements.
• Limited land space and tenure security, particularly in informal settlements, is limiting  toilet facilities in households/communities.
• Having a toilet is viewed as a luxury irrespective of the place of residence.
• Toilets in informal settlements are a source of powerApart from the municipal communal toilets, all others are shared by both men and women.
• The shame linked to open defecation induces the use of alternative options such as the use of buckets in homes for defecation.
• Despite their critical role as sanitation users, producers and decision-makers, women have limited spaces to raise their voices.
• Local authorities are focused more on sanitary issues in formal neighborhoods of the city than informal settlements, markets and workplace dominantly occupied by women.
• Sanitation must be considered across the off-grid/on-grid divide and gender relations. Any potential future investments to improve sanitation across places must be done with a gender lens.

By: Catarina Mavila Magaia, Georgina Pagesptit, Ilundi Cabral, Sandra Roque, Beira Team Researchers, at COWI, June 2021. Photos by Januario Magaia, Inview Lda, 2020.

Coming soon.