Then in the evening you pick your large Mtsuko (clay pot) and rush to a lake near your village to draw some water for drinking and cooking only to discover some human excreta in your pot the next day morning!

Now stop imagining because the two above incidents happened to 38-year-old fisherman Justin Batumeyo and 27-year-old mother of five Gladys Mgwalangwa in the lakeshore district of Salima respectively!

“The incident was my turning point in my life because after that I decided to raise some money and construct a toilet,” said Batumeyo.

Mgwalangwa on the other hand also disclosed that she was traumatized by the discovery of human wastes in her pot.

“...and to prevent my husband and children from suffering from the same trauma after discovering human feaces in my pot I kept the matter to myself,” she said.

Mgwalangwa further explained that said she believes that her family did not suffer from waterborne disease after drinking the contaminated water she had drawn from the lake because she had applied Water Guard before consumption.

Batumeyo and Mgwalangwa’s experiences are just some of the prices residents in Salima (90 Km from Lilongwe) have been silently paying for their risky and unhygienic practices when a lake (in this case Lake Malawi) is used as a toilet and a water source for drinking!

The use of the lake as a toilet plus poor sanitation, has indeed been putting lives of Salima communities at risks of contracting waterborne diseases such as cholera especially during rainy season.

Most households, especially those on the lakeshore in Salima have no latrines because when the structures are constructed they collapse due to heavy rains and the loose sandy soil texture.

“The collapsing of the toilets frustrates people.There is low number of latrines, especially along the lake due to soil texture and people are both defecating in the lake to relieve themselves and drawing water for drinking from it,” Salima District Environmental Officer Paul Chunga explained.

He added that since some residents use the lake as a toilet while others draw water from it for domestic purposes including for drinking the activities fuel the risk of waterborne diseases including cholera outbreaks.

“To prevent the outbreak and spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera we encourage people to apply chlorine to the water before drinking,” said Chunga.


Salima District Health Officer (DHO) Florence Bwanali said Salima, with 931 villages, 18 health facilities, 10 Traditional Authorities (T/As) and a population of 355,977, is often among districts recording high waterborne cases including cholera during rainy season between October and March in Malawi.

“We experience waterborne diseases such as cholera here because of poor sanitation, mainly along the lake including lack of clean water and poor hygienic practices,” she said adding that access to safe drinking water and good sanitation and hygiene prevents cholera outbreaks.

“Prevention of cholera requires adequate sanitation facilities and remains best because a vaccine against the disease though available is not effective,” said Bwanali.

Meanwhile, recognizing that local communities in Salima were struggling to initiate change and their areas have low access to safe water and sanitation, WaterAid Malawi and its local and international partners initiated some projects to facilitate improvement in Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).

The projects were in appreciation that Salima had particular problems with traditional latrine construction due to sandy soil conditions.

This was even seen as an appropriate setting for the piloting of different approaches, with the potential for significantly useful expansion well beyond the benefits to an estimated 25, 000 direct beneficiaries.

While it began in the T/As Kuluunda, the project had expanded to include TAs Maganga and Pemba.

The focus from the start was on the deepening and protection of traditional hand-dug wells and scoop holes, provision of associated water points, promotion of composting latrines and parallel hygiene education.

So far, one of the concepts bringing change on sanitation through encouraging communities to turn their areas into Open Defacation Free (ODF) in Salima is the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS).

The concept, being advanced by local assemblies, was adopted on a pilot phase in nine of Malawi’s 28 districts with financial support from Plan International, WaterAid Malawi and UNICEF aiming at expanding it countrywide.

The concept is even reported to be in use in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

However, Arthur Ngoza, a Medical Assistant at Maganga Health Centre in Salima said if the ODF is to pay more dividends in improving sanitation in the district it requires all stakeholders taking a lot of dedication.

He said for instance, making follow-ups was more important to bring more change.

“If you trigger them and don’t follow-up, the people will quickly forget what they have learned. So the follow-ups will be the most important step. If we cannot focus on the follow-ups, I doubt we can be Open Defacation Free. But if we focus we can have success,” he explained.

On water access Malawi Government boasts that over 80 per 100 people in the country’s over 13 million people are accessing safe water.

Yes! Capital Hill (Malawi Government Headquarters) in Lilongwe even further through the 2008 Malawi Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report indicates that the percentage of households with improved access to sanitation in Malawi have increased from 72 percent in 1990 to 88 percent in 2006.

“This is an indication that the country is making good progress towards achieving improved access to good sanitation,” reads the MDGs report.

The document also says that Malawi, compared to many other sub-Saharan countries, has a high level of access to improved sanitation facilities.

Lilongwe even projects that 98 percent of Malawians will have adequate sanitation by 2015, well above the MDG target of 86 percent, according to the same MDGs document.

Contented with this performance, former Finance now Defence Minister Ken Kandodo even moved to reduce the 2009-2010 allocation to the ministry in charge of sanitation by 25 percent.

But according to the World Bank while Malawi is indeed moving in the right direction on water supply as the coverage stands at 80 percent, there is still more to be done to improve on sanitation coverage as is low standing at 56 percent.

This is even why recently through WaterAid Malawi and its partners’ ‘Big Dig’ initiative sunk a borehole at Bokola Village in Salima and the initiative is meant to drill more boreholes to bring safe water to over 130,000 people in rural communities across Malawi.

To help communities improve on sanitation through discouraging people from Open Defacation especially in rural areas such as Salima in Malawi on the other hand the Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) gave Lilongwe a whooping $50 million (about K14.4 billion) for toilets construction countrywide.

Even on its part the World Toilet Organization (WTO) discloses that 2.6 billion people (or 2 in every 5 in the over 7 billion global population) mainly in the developing world including Malawi are poor, spend less than $2 ( about K600) a day and have no toilets.

The organization says such poor coverage in sanitation globally has plagued the developing world with many, but manageable problems; including outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera, prolonging poverty and infringements on women’s rights.