Toilet Twinning
I've spent the whole week trying to explain what toilet twinning is and why I did it after mentioning it on Facebook and discovering that most people had no idea what it meant - was I installing a new toilet in my bathroom? Was I decorating my toilet somehow? No.
Firstly the name - twinning is something we do in the UK between cities and towns - for example my city of Cardiff is twinned with Luhansk - Ukraine, Stuttgart - Germany, Nantes - France, Hordaland - Norway and Xiamen - China. There will be a committee in each city who will arrange visits between the two cities, exchange programmes, choir/orchestra tours, sports tours etc.
Toilet twinning means you twin or link your toilet with a toilet in a place which had no toilet until you paid for one to be built. TWO AND A HALF BILLION people don't have access to a toilet so they go when and where they can and can't wash their hands afterwards. This is really bad for their health as you can imagine it's also unsafe particularly for women who wait until it's dark and go outside the village and squat at risk of snake bites, being attacked and even raped.
Having a toilet along with education about hygiene and handwashing makes people healthier, children miss less school due to being sick, parents can work better and have more energy when they are healthier in fact for each £1 spent on health and sanitation £8 is returned through saved time, increased productivity and reduced health costs.
Some people have a stereotypical view that Africans are lazy, in fact for the poorest often they're just sick, they pick up all kinds of bugs and viruses, a bit of Malaria once or twice a year, they are just what we might call 'under the weather' ALL the time but they don't know any different.
So what happens is a couple of charities in the UK (google toilet twinning) have started to build toilets in various communities mostly in Burundi at the moment. The measure of the 'extreme poor' is those earning less than a dollar a day - in Burundi the average income (average - so lots of people earn less than this) is $0.50US, 30p UK, 2Dh UAE. I can't even imagine that - I don't think you can live on that however cheap things are to buy you just can't. I don't think I could live on 2 Dh for 5 minutes if you include my rent, water etc.
I'm really thankful that I have 1 toilet in my flat in Cardiff, 2 in my aparment in AD, there are 3 at work - all of them have locks on the doors, sinks with clean water on tap - the ones at work even have flowers in - I'm so blessed!
So I wanted to twin my toilet to give people in Burundi a chance for toilet happiness too.
Do you want to twin your toilet?
It costs £60 UK or 370 Dh UAE to twin your toilet - you can do it online http://www.toilettwinning.org/ with a visa card or if you're in UAE and don't have a UK bank account you can give me the money and I'll happily do it for you to save the commission charges.
