By: Kinoti Meme, Director of Education & Training

I grew up in a rural community on the eastern slopes of Mt. Kenya. At about six thousand feet above sea level, conditions were very wet compared to other parts of the country, and we had an abundance of water most of the year. Every day, rain or shine, several of us eleven children would collect water from a river about one-half mile from our home. We shared the riverbanks with cattle and goats, and when the
water was low during the dry season, many people in my community would
contract parasites and get diarrheal disease. We did not know why we were getting sick.

With eleven children, my mom was fairly strict about using our pit latrine. Still, she followed the cultural practice of allowing small children to defecate in the open,
and we boys would often opt for the bush over the latrine. We did not have any idea that what we were doing was dangerous, and we attributed diarrheal illness and deaths of young children in our community to other causes.

Our community had a primary school for boys and girls. Boys thought the latrines were unnecessary and would rarely use theirs. Even though the girls’ latrines were much more frequently used, they were cleaner! Our teachers perpetuated our idea
that sanitation and cleanliness were for girls by teaching Friday afternoon hygiene classes to girls only. We boys had arts and crafts during that time, so I had no idea what they talked about. When a teacher wanted to punish a pupil who was misbehaving, he or she would send them to clean up around the school or clean the latrines. So growing up, school kids always thought of good hygiene and sanitation
as punishment.

I went off to boarding school for high school. As far as hygiene and sanitation goes, it was worse than primary school. The school was downriver from my home, and it was in a more arid region where water was scarce. Imagine hundreds of fourteen-to-seventeen-year-old boys all in one place. Hygiene was the last thing on our minds! There too the teachers used cleaning up as punishment. Many of us lost many days of
class because we had diarrhea. We would blame it on the food.

When I went to college no one taught me how to use a modern toilet, so I would always stand on the toilet seat. I certainly was not the only one
to do this, since every time I would enter a stall I would see footprints on the seat. It took me walking in on someone to learn the proper way to use it!

My childhood experiences have convinced me that Lifewater’s WASH in Schools initiative is a very important step toward saving lives and improving health in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America. If I had good training on sanitation and hygiene from my teachers, I think I would have formed healthy habits from the start. Kids in my community generally thought that what teachers taught was true—we all respected our teachers’ authority. We respected our parents too, but we were more likely to challenge their ideas. And sanitation was a “taboo” topic that we never discussed. In
addition, even though we often used a latrine at home, most of my friends avoided the school latrines, so I did too. Peer pressure is powerful! If every child is taught hygiene and sanitation at school, they reinforce good habits by modeling them to each other.

As director of Education & Training, and as a person who has a personal connection to rural communities, I am very excited about Lifewater’s growing emphasis on reaching schools with water, sanitation, and hygiene education. The potential for positive change is great! Thank you to all who will be supporting these efforts to provide children with every possible advantage early in their lives.

Kinoti Meme, Director of Education & Training, received his doctorate in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary in 2008. He has worked in community development with World Vision International in Kenya and the United Methodist Church in the U.S. He and his wife, Vicki, have two boys, ages eight and twelve.

If you would like to support Lifewater’s work through our partners in Ethiopia, please contact us or start now.

The Company's strategy for achieving that goal has three components:

• Reduce - Improving water efficiency by 20 percent by 2012, compared to a baseline year 2004.
  
  
• Recycle - Returning all water the Company uses for manufacturing processes to the environment at a level that supports aquatic life and agriculture by the end of 2010.
  
  
• Replenish - Expanding the Company's support of healthy watersheds
  and sustainable community water programs to balance the water used in
  its finished beverages.

World Water Day 2009