Sh*t

No, you didn’t read that wrong; I actually intend to write a whole blog post dedicated to shit.  And I don’t mean the derogatory reference to random things, but the actual fecal matter itself.  Let me explain.

As any Peace Corps-experienced person will tell you, once you enter this exclusive club, you get used really quickly to talking matter-of-factly about shit.  Yours, your friends’, your community’s, the cow’s, the goat’s…anybody’s really.  We all get sick at some point and the most common bodily reaction to anything here is the runs.  You must realize that sterile, clean, healthy, and private places in which to conduct this business is not really normal outside of the Western world.  Somehow, the West has come to a place where it is unthinkable to build any kind of public or private structure without some kind of bathroom.  In most of the developing world, including Ghana, this is not the case.  Running water is still a rare commodity in Ghana, but as I’ve learned, one doesn’t need running, chlorinated water such as we have in the US in order to be clean and sanitary and healthy.  Flush toilets are not really an accessible goal here, though they are in many places, but that does not mean that pit latrines (yes, for the less technical—big hole potties) cannot be bug-free, odor-free, and just as comfortable (the one at my house definitely will be).  NGOs for decades have built public latrines, but without the infrastructure to maintain and care for them, they quickly deteriorate into I’d-rather-shit-my-pants status (such as the one in Techiman that I walked into and immediately out of).  For the Health, Water and Sanitation field of the Ghanaian Government itself, the promotion of latrine use and the elimination of open defecation and hence, childhood diarrhea, is priority one.  Many communities in the Northern Regions are significantly poorer than the south and have not historically been able to afford latrines, especially when there is an endless supply of “bush” in which to shit and when you’ve always done it that way.

These last two weeks have been reserved for technical training.  This is where they have split us trainees into our “sectors.”  I am with the other 12 Health/WATSAN volunteers in a village called Gushie, learning about Peace Corps Ghana’s sanitation goals, how to educate about a variety of different health issues (shit-related and not shit-related), and different borehole (water pump) mechanisms.  We joke that as WATSAN volunteers we will be spending our two years talking about shit, but we really have a wide variety of issues to tackle and tasks to be involved in.  These last two weeks I have:  educated 5th graders about the causes of diarrhea (shit yet again), 8^th graders about HIV/AIDS, and farmers about malaria.  I have dug a latrine pit, tossed rocks into a soak away pit, weighed the cutest newborn babies, and learned how to teach treatment for malnourished children.  (I also sat on a live crocodile and got kicked out of a national park, but those are stories of minor importance.)  All of these things, I know I will do at some point in my service while living in Damanko.  But still, shit reigns supreme.  There’s just no getting away from it.  Especially when there are some cases when it is not taboo.  Many cultures throughout the world, especially those in which cattle play a major part of daily life, use shit for many purposes—though it’s normally cattle and not human.  Other UN projects have found a way to make biostoves that use human excrement for fuel which cuts down substantially on the collection of firewood and the work load of women.  While in Gushie, we witnessed such a task.

Every several years, any normal household needs to redo its compound's floor.  It is a large task--too big for one person or household to do alone--and so it is done through an event called the zuha.  The old floor is torn up, and lots of dirt is gathered.  Then, the women gather their female neighbors together for the floor pounding exercise.  Each woman has a stick with one flat side and they spread the dirt and water mixture (read: water and cow shit) over the floor, then a specially chosen singer leads the group in song and all the women beat the floor together in rhythm until it is smooth, compact, and hard.  There are dozens of songs, all proverbial prayers for the house, and all in sing and response style.  Drums, and singing and dancing are a way of life and entertainment here in Ghana, especially in the rural regions, and one can rarely find a collective activity where not one of things is present.  As the women pound away at the mud on the floor, it is a beautiful sight to see--all the women coming together as one, making the mundanest of tasks a celebration of community life and sisterhood.  When the floor is pounded, it undoubtedly splatters everywhere.  By the time we were done participating, we were covered in shit.  But the most beautifully-gotten, hard-earned shit possible.