Pastor Moses’ Mission for a Healthier Ugandan Village

by Marieke Kremer

As the pastor of a busy evangelical church in the Ugandan village of Kihembo, Moses Ategeka has a few hundred people to care for. During his work, he looks beyond the spiritual and back to the earthly. For example, he ensured that the members of his parish can go to the bathroom safely.

Moses proudly points it out: there, right next to his church at the top of the hill, a new toilet block was recently constructed. Anyone who needs to go after the service can easily get there via a narrow path. For himself and his family, he also had a private toilet built; it is right next to his house, which is a little lower in the valley.

It may not sound very special, but in this part of Uganda, it is. Until recently, Moses and his community had to use latrines that no one liked to go to. These latrines consisted of a simple hole in the ground, where it smelled bad, and where flies, viruses, and bacteria felt at home.“It almost wasn’t doable,” Moses recalls. “The soil here is no longer solid because of mining. The deep latrines we used were unsafe because of that. I was always terrified that one would collapse just when someone was in there.”

Something as simple as going to the bathroom had become a fearful yet unavoidable task. “I even let my two young children go into the bushes because I was too afraid something would happen.” There was no other alternative, he says, because in rural Uganda, sewers are still an unattainable dream.

And to make matters worse, bad latrines aren’t even cheap. “They couldn’t be emptied. When they were full, you had to close them and dig a new one a little farther away. Because land is limited, and you’d rather use your yard for something else, you want to do that as little as possible. Therefore, the holes were made very deep. And digging deep is very expensive.”

Through local health care provider and churchgoer Brenda Ayebare—“education about sanitation is my gospel”—Moses heard about the FINISH Mondial approach. In short, people are enabled, often through a small loan, to have a toilet built by specially trained masons. The improved toilets they build can be emptied.

Moreover, each sanitation system has two bins. When the first one is full, it is sealed, and the moisture seeps out through a drainage system. By the time the second bin becomes full, the human waste in the first has dried up and is ready to be turned into manure. That bin is emptied, the second closed, and the process repeats itself. Because the toilet has two bins instead of one, they don’t have to be as deep, making it safe.

“Look at those banana plants,” Brenda points out. “They grow better now that Moses is using the manure.” The pastor agrees: “I thought it was kind of a dirty idea at first, like your bananas have something to do with your feces. But now I know that the manure is clean, that there are no bad bacteria left in it.” Brenda adds: “I always say, it’s totally organic because there are no chemicals involved. That makes it better than the stuff you buy at the store.”

It is equally important that Moses’ community is healthier since many people in his village now use a clean toilet. “As a pastor, I set an example. Many people used the new toilets at my home and next to the church, and wanted one for themselves. They then heard from Brenda about the benefits: that you have less diarrhoea and stomach aches, for example.”

No one needs to be left out of this, Brenda emphasises. “Some people are reluctant because they think they can’t afford it. But when they hear how low the interest rate is and how long they can take to repay, they usually get excited about the idea. Moreover, the poorest, who do not qualify for even this loan, are included in a cluster. Then ten families who have a little more to spend pay together for one extra toilet.”

Out of the thousand or so people in Moses’ community, roughly half now have a sanitation system installed through FINISH. “And we will continue until we reach 100 percent,” he says. “It’s affordable, good for our health, and the bananas taste better because of it. What more could you ask for?”