You may be wondering why I have a picture of a beach to illustrate the reason for this post. For fishermen and fishing villages along the shores of India, this is their toilet. Every morning, the men squat in a horizontal row parallel to the shoreline, carefully spaced apart as they do their "daily functions." Obviously with the strong waves, it doesn't take much for the solid waste to enter the ocean, polluting both it and the shoreline. Away from the beach, men take a leak anywhere they feel like it. Women have it harder, as it is culturally not acceptable for them to be seen doing their functions. The privacy of darkness is often used, with the women sometimes having to hold it throughout the day. Urinary tract infections are a common result.
Why are they doing this, you may ask? For more than 50% of India's homes, there are no toilets. In the overcrowded slum areas, there may be few or none. Worldwide, nearly 40% lack access to this basic right. Even some schools here lack toilets; others are so gross and unsanitary that children refuse to use them. Students in our elementary school's "Roots & Shoots" program created posters highlighting the problem and placed them on the doors of our many bathrooms at the school. Today at lunch, I walked past one and saw a worker reading it. "Does she have a toilet in her house?" I wondered. Then I thought about my apartment - 3 toilets, only one of which is used on any regular basis. And I felt a bit ashamed.
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