Meeting Sanitary Needs during long Road Trips in Remote Areas
Lessons from my Experiences
Have you ever wondered how relief workers traveling long distances in remote areas meet their sanitary needs?
Well many of the vehicles which are used by relief workers do not boast of toilet facilities and workers use them to travel over long distances to remote areas. During my over 28 years of working as a woman in the United Nations and undertaking long missions, some of which lasted for up to 10 hours, I learned a few lessons from my personal experience.
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On my first long trip, we were two women traveling with some male colleagues. After about two hours into the trip, one of the men said to the driver: “sanitary stop please.” So the driver pulled to the side of the road, the men jumped out faced the bush and did their thing. As I watched them, I wanted to ease myself, as well, but did not know how I could, so I thought I would just have to hold my urine until we reached our destination.
Then it became unbearable, so I asked for a sanitary stop too. My female colleague said that she would join me, so we came out of the vehicle. We were wearing pants so we realized that we could not squat at the side of the road, without exposing ourselves. Moving into the bush, we were afraid of snakes, but there was no way out, so we had to act fast. I tried to teach my American friend how to squat, but she ended up wetting her pants and it was quite an embarrassment to return to the vehicle.
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Getting into the bush for cover was risky, so I decided that I would never wear pants when going on long trips and that I would be brave and request my male colleagues not to look behind the vehicle while I squat to relieve myself, hoping that an upcoming vehicle would not show up.
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I also decided that it was wise to use every opportunity to use a toilet at stops along the route. But in remote areas, one has to be prepared for shocks. Once, in a village in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, we had stopped at a local village hosting refugees. The villagers were very kind to us and offered us some cakes, which tasted quite good. The compound was spotlessly clean, except that there were so many flies around. We waved off the flies and as a courtesy we started eating the cakes. Then, thinking of the long route ahead, I asked to use the toilet.
I was led to this building, which I thought was a latrine. I was given the key and when I opened the door, I was stunned by what I saw. There were heaps of faeces at different stages of maturity on the bare floor. So I had to leap to avoid stepping on a heap and find an empty spot to squat. I also noticed that this building was the source of the flies. I thought that I should find a way to warn my colleagues not to eat the cake, but when I came out, they had eaten it all up. Later I learnt that there was a cultural belief that faeces should not be allowed to pile up on each other, and this arrangement was an improvement to open defecation.
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For field trips, one needs to have some basic knowledge of the routes and what could be possible dangers of having sanitary stops on some stretches of the route such in the tribal areas in Pakistan, where everyone seemed to walk around with rifles, or in war-torn areas, where evidence of attacks are still visible, like in Chad, when we travelled for almost 800 kilometres, through burning villages, from the capital Njamena to Maro on the border with the Central African Republic.
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Soon, I learned the following lessons, which served me in good stead during my time at the United Nations:
· There is a need for strategic planning before the trip
· Make use of every possibility along the way
· Be prepared to squat and master the art of squatting to urinate and defecate
· Avoid the need to have to stop in dangerous areas
· Consider wearing skirts rather than pants (for women)
· Be brave to request a sanitary stop
· Avoid using bushes in areas that may be snake-infected
