My Plight for Cleanliness

By: Sherry S Kurisinkal

After years of hard, mind boggling and dedicated service in a public school, my dad got an offer in 1999 to teach in a private school, Oshwal High. That year I joined the same school as a form one student.

Naturally, dad took the job, which offered a higher salary not to mention fringe benefits such as free staff housing and free family medical insurance schemes. In a week we had moved into the new staff quarters. The newly attained luxury encompassed us. But in a few days, I began to acknowledge the stench originating from the nearby Masai slums, through which we had to pass through every day to go to school.

The slums were fetid, stinking horror. Their streets were open lanes, lined with open sewers overflowing with their burden of garbage, urine, and excrement, each nourishing its hordes of rats, cockroaches, and buzzing clouds of flies and mosquitoes. The water flowing from their rare pumps was usually polluted by the decomposing corpses of rodents.

Weeks of my perception of this sad plight passed. Eventually, I could bear the stench no longer. Instantly, I approached a slum boy of my age and queried him on their irresponsible and unacceptable behavior. But all I could see in his eyes was hatred, hatred for a good doer. He spat at my feet and scurried away.

It is amazing how small children can blabber so much. And it was from such a one that I constituted their lack of latrines.

The men and women of Masai slums selected a bush closer to their dwellings for the call of 'nature' because of its proximity to a pond. Reaching the bush, they squatted as close to the ground as was physically possible. Thus ensconced they were enjoined from looking at the sun. Looking sideways was a grave offense, because, other men and women were also performing their act at the same time. When they finished, they washed their hands and feet in the pond.

The children, however, were not so secretive. They carried out their morning business wherever they pleased, mostly on the roadside, so that they could gaze at the cars whizzing by.

Yet not everyone in Masai slums shared this disregard for my kind. Nubia Kololosho, the slum leader, narrated their problems to me. It so happened that half of the menfolk were unemployed, and of those fortunate ones, their daily wages were eighty shillings, about one dollar. Their daily struggle was to obtain the most basic necessity, food. All my eyes could see were starving, thin, children with potbellies; red, dull eyes; rotten and bleeding gums, and wounds all over their bodies. Spend thrifting on latrines was not an option. It was this sight that triggered a certain emotion in me, an emotion of sadness, and a craving madness to help these mortals.

Thus began my endless odyssey to help these less fortunate of Masai slums. It was clear that sanitation was their major quandary. So I began to plan ways of getting money. I told my parents about my strategy, but they were not too enthusiastic, thinking that I would wind up at a dead end and give up this fantasy.

After deep pondering, I finally decided to approach those who thought like me, the students of my school. Monday before the morning assembly, I urged our head mistress to allow me to talk to the students, hoping that in some way, I would be able to pierce into the soft part of their heart and make them understand the perils of the slum dwellers. After a brief speech, I relentlessly waited for the results. But the outcome was not very promising. Only a handful of students had answered to my plea. But nevertheless, together we formed a club, called 'Masai welfare club'.

My first move was to approach my neighbors. After all, this problem affected them too. But their ignorance gave me a negative feedback. Their attitude" we lived here for ten years and have got used to it. In time you too will get used to it."

Their behavior shocked me. Once more I decided to try my fellow pupils. For the second time, I made a speech in the assembly, this time, a very touching one, such that I could make tears emerge in their thoughts. I requested them to donate their one-day recess money that they used to buy French fries from a local junk food joint 'Gatundus'. This time, the outcome was very pleasing and promising. By the end of the week, students had contributed so much that I was finally able to collect five thousand shillings. This large sum gave me the incentive to go on.

Still, this money wasn't enough. I inquired in a few hardware stores the cost of tools for digging, concrete slabs and tin sheets for the structure. The rough estimate that I was given was ten thousand shillings, for one latrine.

I was almost heartbroken. I wanted to build ten latrines for the benefit of these people. Where was I supposed to get a hundred thousand? That year I was only a twelve year old kid. Still, I refused to give up. Thus was my firm determination. Together with my club, we organized a cross-country charity walk. We dished out brochures in places like supermarkets, restaurants and night clubs. The walk was destined to take place on Saturday the nineteenth of December 1999. At the end of the day, we had acquired nineteen thousand, five hundred shillings. Thus altogether we had enough to make two pit latrines.

I remained stagnant for the next month. Somehow, ideas had stopped flowing into my head. But finally, it was my dad who came to my rescue. February the fourteenth was coming up, Valentine's Day. Each year a sort of fair was held on the school premises by the various school clubs. So my dad urged me to organize the day's events and take the profits that emerged.

I spent two weeks preparing for this day. Naturally, I took help from my friends and from clubs to organize the various events. We had a cake sale. My mum and I made most of the cakes with some of my friends' mothers also pitched in. There were also a few fun activities such as 'knock three bottles with a ball', 'pin the tail on the pony', 'dunk the clown' and the likes.

Of course, one could not forget the most important part of Valentines-flowers. Here and there a few stalls sold roses for forty shilling each, we also organized conveying roses and messages from our boys, to girls in other schools. For this, we charged an extra ten shillings. The roses were selling like hot cakes. By lunchtime, five hundred roses were sold out, four hundred of which we delivered. Thus, from roses alone we collected twenty-four thousand!

By the end of the day, we had collected thirty-seven thousand, nine hundred shillings. But that was not the end. Five of the school clubs donated one thousand shillings; the Interact club, the Drama club, the Mountaineering club, the Wildlife club and the Eco cub.

Adding all the money was a great pleasure for all of us. We knew that we have received a lot. Everything added up, we finally had fifty-three thousand, five hundred and seventy shillings. I was overjoyed!

I had enough money to build five latrines. I decided to let the project commence. After all, five latrines were quite good.

The journey to clean up Masai village began. It took a week to clean up all the garbage and excrement. All the villagers participated in the cleanup process.

Another three weeks had passed before the five latrines were built. Each pit was dug four meters deep and one meter wide. Their floors were covered with concrete slabs and surrounded by well-joined galvanized sheeting.

A year has passed. Now it is 2002 and I am in form three. Yet I still remember the joy I derived out of my hard work and dedication to the welfare of those people. Tears of sheer happiness roll down my cheeks as I still remember the chicken, Chief Kololosho gave me, not so much as a reward, but more as a way of saying 'Thank you'. I had tasted the exalting pleasure then, by accepting that small token of appreciation. We had shared a triumph. Nowadays, as I walk through that street, I see the faint smiles on those people as they greet me. The young boy who had previously spat at my feet had now gotten over his hatred and had somehow developed a new found respect towards me. Maybe I had not personally benefitted from my plight, but I did make the air fresh, the grounds clean, and had given these people a reason to live with dignity, and that was more important.