Nafisatu Yunusa is excited about change. The 23-year-old mother of three lives in Marafa, a village of just over 600 people in Bauchi State, northern Nigeria, where the dry winter season can be hard. Red dust clouds the sky, vegetation turns brown, and there’s no rain for months.
Like other rural communities in the region, for a long time, many people in the village of Marafa did not have access to running water or toilets.
Without them, open defecation was the norm. Most households had lost at least one family member to preventable diseases such as cholera and typhoid.
Fields and villages were contaminated with feces, which was not only unsightly and malodorous, but was also extremely unsanitary.
“Back then, our children were always suffering from diarrhea, typhoid fever, cholera,” Nafisatu explains.
“It was the biggest challenge we had, it was everywhere.”
But the establishment of a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Committee, or WASHCOM, in her village, has
transformed Nafisatu’s life.
The WASHCOMS have been set up in communities in the area under UNICEF’s SHAWN (Sanitation Hygiene and Water in Nigeria) programme, which is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).
Nafisatu works as a treasurer for the WASHCOM and is one of the nine Mafara WASHCOM members who have been trained to teach healthy sanitation practices to
others in the community. “Now when a child goes to use the toilet he or she comes and washes hands – with soap, if it is available, or ash,” she says, “and that has contributed a lot to stopping the spread of diseases.” As a result, Marafa has become one of 351 communities that are now certified as “open defecation free” in the Local Government Area of Dass, in Bauchi state. Every household in the community has a latrine and nearby hand washing facilities.
And the SHAWN programme has
Information about stopping open
defecation has helped to make the
village a more attractive – and
healthier place to live.
Washing hands with simple “tippy taps,” made with easily-available supplies, and soap or ash reduces the spread of disease.
