Toilets, not politics define what is wrong with Kenya

A washroom in one of the buildings in Nairobi: what are padlocks and metal bars doing there? Photo by XN Iraki

A visit to several toilets, better called washrooms, cloakrooms or bathrooms in the city of Nairobi and other towns leaves one perplexed.

Why are cisterns protected by metal bars and padlocks? Long before you see the padlocked cisterns, you have to go looking for the key to the washrooms. If you enquire, you will be told that if washrooms are left open, the cisterns, their handles and other parts of the sewerage system will be stolen. That is not in slums, but in high end estates and streets.

Unfortunately, we focus all our attention on the political front, which makes the country appear dysfunctional. Why not look at the small things that matter as much?

We are all slaves of biological processes, from eating to answering the calls of nature, the diplomatic term for defecation and related functions. Taking care of these biological functions might be a better indicator of a nation’s status than even GDP growth rate.

The invention of the flush toilet and the cleanliness that goes with it together with the modern sewerage system may have saved more lives than penicillin particularly in the urban areas. Why is this simple fact not appreciated? We still have cholera outbreaks in the 21st century?

We have taken another step and made toilets or washrooms a source of income. We charge people per use. We even differentiate the long call from the short call. Why not use a stop watch? Interestingly, charging for the use of the toilet affects the poor more than the affluent who rarely use such public facilities. Consumers of the toilet facilities rarely complain. The calls of nature are occasional, and the charges low, which is an illusion.

Can be automated

If you spend two minutes in the short call for Sh5, it looks cheap to an individual. But wait. If the washroom is open 24 hours, you got 720 two minute slots, giving you Sh3600 a day. If 10 men can stand on the line, it sums to Sh36,000 per toilet, per day. It is more profitable to operate men than women toilets! Add the fact that use of the toilet is a necessity or in economic speak-inelastic and you see real money. For the same reason “small” things like sweets are very profitable to supermarkets.

I should own a chain of toilets! If you automate money collection and cleaning to reduce your labour costs, you are in real money. It is demeaning to have men or women sit outside a toilet collecting money all the day. That can be automated. I used such a toilet in California’s Silicon Valley, it was operated by a coin (quarter dollar) and one had 20 minutes to use. It was not clear to me what happened after 20 minutes, I did not stay long enough.

Use of the toilet is a ‘small’ thing, but there is a lot of money and emotions involved. The state of the toilets is a proxy measure of a country state of development. Developed countries have a well developed sewerage system, in both homes and offices. They are so developed and abundant that charging on per use basis is rare.

Instead, you pay it as part of your water bill. Sewerage system is a common good, which like roads is better provided by the Government through regulated monopolies. The presence of private toilets in public places is filling a gap left by Government failure to provide such basic facilities. You may have noted that locations of such private toilets are limited, which maintains the high charges. The location was so strategic that in Nairobi, the toilets were sold off. Paradoxically, the county governments copied the private sector in making money from the toilets (sorry washrooms).

The mismatch between the supply and demand of washrooms or better sewerage facilities, keeps their prices high. The shortage is a symptom of our thinking. We fail to think broadly, taking care of basic human needs. It goes beyond washrooms. We never realised that Lang’ata cemetery would one day fill up? Would raising the burial fees shift us to cremation?

Lots of apartment complexes are going up in Nairobi and other urban areas. Where are the other facilities like playgrounds, schools, churches, and cemeteries? Toilets are so basic, and their scarcity is a reflection of the state of the economy and how we view life, its processes and one another.

After all, going to the washroom is a great equalizer; we do the same thing in the bathroom irrespective of our socio-economic status. Why then should we make it so hard for some people to access such basic facilities? Why can’t we make them so abundant that we never even think about them?

And why have we not applied the technology used in the plane to toilets on the ground? Why do we pump clean water from Ndakaini and Sasumua dams, 150km away to use in flushing toilets?

Once we take care of such basic needs like toilets, we can get time to think of bigger things like politics and innovations. By the way, how do tourists react to padlocks on toilet cisterns?