Decrepit state of public toilets betrays elitist mindset of urban policymakers

One reason why focusing on the governance of our capital frequently takes us to the lavatory with such outrageous ease is simple: the site of the governance of urban devolution typically expresses itself in the metaphors of cleanliness, hygiene and order.

Often, its failures manifest as farcical policy and dysfunctional governance, together with social tragicomedy. On this note, ladies and gentlemen, shall we go for a short call?

How shall we find the lavatories, then? In the African People’s Republic of Kenya, we mainly employ the olfactory faculty. This is to say that as soon as your bowels pointedly exert a certain pressure, we reflexively activate the sense of smell.

Thus, we must track the rich thick fragrance of acrid ammonia essence, complemented by a warm, ominously familiar base of ripening assorted faecal flavours, and set off against the occasional highlights of drunken vomit with assertive notes of decomposing, partially digested food and alcohol.

As a general rule, the stronger the aroma, the closer our destination, subject to the following proviso, that is to say: save for the gravity-harnessing, ‘long drop’ outhouses of our rural villages, the malodour is gentle, if not faint from the ‘ladies’ or ‘female’ facilities, and brutally fortified on the ‘gentlemen’ or ‘wanaume’ side.

Because I am not a sociopath, I will not trespass into the Ladies. I would rather offer you a peek at the Gents. The extravagance of the welcoming stench is immediately and fully accounted for by the general state of the infrastructure.

We will be greeted by rust-stained sinks adorned with many shades of dried mud, and dust, and choked with a cake of dried pulp under a drought-stricken tap held together with rubber tubing, sisal rope or an insulated electrical conductor. 

We will wade through a shallow pool of seemingly clear water, with myriad floating and partially sunk debris, including cigarette packs, business cards, bottle caps and bones. Upon disturbance, the water turns light brown, then dark as a smelly sludge begins to stir and release the establishment’s signature fragrance.

With any luck, we shall espy a ruined water closet with a vandalised cistern, with its cover jauntily suspended like a rogue’s hat. Underneath it, we shall see the lieu des affaires itself, the locus in quo, the site where we install ourselves to discharge the functions required to relieve bowel pressure. There we will see a throne in disarray, full to the brim of the solid, semi-solid and liquefied yield of variously distressed bowels. 

Elementary hygiene

The absence of any attempts at basic sanitation or elementary hygiene will come home to us, and we will understand why the sleekest, most industrious and Gargantuan flies hum about in their hundreds as they busily taxi along the rugged and corrugated surface of plentiful excrement. 

Thereafter, like aircraft, they taxi and take off on the obligatory commute terminating on the cusps of beverage cups and the rims of water and wine glasses or the nourishing plates of distinguished patrons.

Meanwhile, with braveness born of desperation, we gingerly tip-toe to a urinal where we muster our all to assume the position. Behind us, we might hear harsh explosions, sorrowful moans, needy whines and urgent whistling perhaps even punctuated with serpentine hissing behind us, emanating from a closed cubicle beside the laden ruins aforementioned.

The noisy affair will come to an abrupt end, and the door will burst open, letting out a chap fussing with his fabrics and belt, holding his cell phone between his teeth. He will not queue behind us as we valiantly coax a reluctant tap to wash our hands.

Instead, like a true man of business, he will stride busily back to the restaurant, leaving behind a fresh mound of acrid deposits, splattered liberally all over the only functioning toilet, because flushing is the work of idle people. 

One in six people wash their hands after visiting the toilets. A cholera outbreak is getting out of control. Before the pandemic containment measures came into force, Nairobi’s Eastlands had been the epicentre of an epidemic that defied eradication and frequently ran out of control, with devastating consequences. The lockdowns virtually eradicated the pestilence. It is back now, with a vengeance. 

One level of the problem is behavioural. People don’t seem to like washing their hands. 

Or dislike being told to wash hands. The other level is infrastructural. For the sake of dignity and hygiene, people should not live and work in such abhorrent proximity to unsanitary spaces. Yet our elites persist with policies aimed at showing the natives their place in the pecking order.

The incestuous relationship between the neglected and privileged parts of our country and cities ensures that the elites responsible for the dysfunction are frequently offered deadly reminders of their responsibility by the occasional taste of their own......(insert four-letter expletive for excrement). 

We have to do better than telling the watus to wash up. 

We must activate our value system to make it mandatory that governance upholds human freedom, dignity and well-being at all times.

Mr Ng’eno is an advocate of the High Court.