Talking about Poop: Lessons Learned from Latin Amercan
January 19, 2011
By Steph Ogden, Water For People Fellow in Innovation and Sustainability
Years ago, while working in El Salvador, I learned the Latin American gesture for diarrhea – a quick brushing of one hand, fingers pursed, across the open palm the other, and then a dramatic splaying of the fingers.
More often than not, I saw this gesture from women, and it wasn’t gossip or indiscrete personal information or meant to earn a chuckle; it was a distress call.
And it was taken seriously; women whose children had diarrhea were scared, and if the diarrhea continued for more than two days, they carried their children to the hospital in a panic. I remember the first time I saw a woman, Nina Caetana, hurrying on foot through the paths leading to the village, her 9 month old son wrapped in her arms. As she passed, she said, “There is no life left in this child.” In this remote little village of El Salvador, as it does in so much of the world, diarrhea meant death for children.
Women would often tell me how many children they had, and include those that had died. On house visits, I would ask how many children a woman had and she would answer something like, “Eight - six living and two dead.” Of those child deaths, diarrheal disease, or rather the effects of it - severe dehydration and malnutrition - accounted for the vast majority.
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