Miguel is Dancing
November 17, 2009
By Kate Fogelberg
Miguel Angel Almendras is dancing—his little feet are kicking up dust on his family’s patio as he expertly shows off la diablada. Dancing in Bolivia is a common expression of joy, found from formal festivals to impromptu demonstrations of individual happiness. Four-year-old Miguel Angel is dancing because he now has a toilet in his home.
Several hours outside of the city of Cochabamba, in the valle alto or “high valley” on the outskirts of the town of Villa Rivero, is the community of Villa Victoria, home to Miguel Angel and 59 other families. In his high-pitched bubbly Spanish, he points a stubby finger out to the fields behind his house, where his mom is attending to the family’s source of income: a few cows and a potato patch. “Before we had this beautiful bathroom, I used to go out in those fields with the cows to go to the bathroom. I didn’t like it, but when I had to or my sister had to go, we would run to the fields and duck down and go. Everybody in my pueblito used to go to the fields, and our caquita is bad for the pueblito.”
He recognizes one of the key dynamics of open defecation in a community at his tender age of four: that personal behaviors can have very negative, or very positive, impacts on the whole community. There is no shame in his young voice as he remembers his recent reality. Rather his eyes sparkle as he relates what life was like before he and his mother, father, and sister had one of life’s most basic needs: a place for his family to privately, conveniently, and hygienically do what most of us never think twice about—going to the bathroom.
Miguel Angel proudly walks into the Almendras family’s new bathroom, provided as part of a five-year intervention supported by Water For People and the local government, the Municipality of Villa Rivero. He walks through all of the steps he takes when he needs to use the toilet, stopping to explain the importance of hand washing. “I always have to wash my hands with this soap and this water after using the bathroom because otherwise your hands will be dirty.”
Betzabel Almendras, Miguel’s older sister, chimes in that Miguel Angel not only washes his own hands but is always making sure that their parents have washed theirs and will make a point to say, “Mama, you didn’t wash your hands before you started peeling the potatoes,” or “Papa, why didn’t you wash your hands when you came out of the bathroom?”
Miguel Angel, though only four years old, has captured the messages promoted through hygiene seminars aimed at kids, using games and other child-friendly activities to cement the importance of this key behavior in reducing childhood diarrhea.
“I am so happy to have this little bathroom,” Miguel Angel continues, barely able to stand still he is so excited. Fortunately, with a bathroom at his house and a clear demonstration that he is practicing hand washing at key times, he will no longer be one of the 1.5 million kids around the world who lose the battle with diarrhea each year.
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