Post 188--Global Hand Washing Day

In the public washroom in my church there are several posters about hand washing on the wall. One that drew my special attention was the one giving step-by-step instructions about how to wash your hands effectively. 

              1. You turn on the tap.
              2. You hold your hands under the tap to wet them.
              3. You apply soap to your hands.
              4.  Etc., etc. 

I don't believe I need to present you with the full list of instructions. If you read this blog, I think you know how to wash your hands without written instructions on your wall. 

My initial reaction was, "My goodness, what's this world coming to?  So much education and we don't know how to wash our hands?" I couldn't believe what I read!  Do we really need that?  Apparently we do.

Different cultures have different ways of caring for their hands, their hygiene and their health. In the part of Nigeria where I spent many years, people are very particular what they do with which hand. The right hand is the social hand and the food hand, because of the unspoken things they do with their left. Before you eat, you wash your hands in a bowl of water that is passed around along with a towel, but without soap. They want to make sure their hands are clean, especially because in some ethnic cultures they eat with their hands  and often in a group from one bowl. But why no soap? Because the soap smell will affect the taste of the food. However, after the meal, a bowl of clean water is passed around along with the towel AND the soap. So, very hygienic.

In the Canadian culture that surrounds me these days, people eat some foods with their hands and some with fork or spoon.  However, many times they do not wash their hands before eating, not even before eating so-called finger foods. Those who do, do so privately, not publicly.  Probably because I lived in Nigeria so long, I tend to wash my hands before eating, but privately from a tap, not at the table. 

This issue is, of course, hygiene and health.  And that holds not only for food, but for many activities. Whenever I come home from outside, I wash my hands even if I do not intend to eat. The reason is that one picks up all kinds of dirt, both seen and unseen, that can make you ill. 

So, perhaps, those washroom posters are necessary after all, even for careless educated people. At any rate the UN and others think the world needs to have its attention drawn to the need to wash hands regularly. So they established Global Hand Washing Day. I quote the following from some websites:

The first Global Hand Washing Day was held in 2008, when over 120 million children around the world washed their hands with soap in more than 70 countries. Since 2008, community and national leaders have used Global Hand Washing Day to spread the word about hand washing, build sinks and tippy taps, and demonstrate the simplicity and value of clean hands.  Each year, over 200 million people are involved in celebrations in over 100 countries around the world. Global Hand Washing Day is endorsed by a wide array of governments, international institutions, civil society organizations, NGOs, private companies, and individuals. 

Global Handwashing Day is an annual global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.

Celebrated annually on October 15, Global Handwashing Day was founded by the Global Handwashing Partnership, and is an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times.

Global Handwashing Day is designed to:

• Foster and support a global and local culture of handwashing with soap
• Shine a spotlight on the state of handwashing around the world
• Raise awareness about the benefits of handwashing with soap

Well, I think you get the point. I urge you to join the event this coming Saturday and that you draw many people's attention to it.  As unlikely as I first thought it, I've become a believer and supporter. I hope the same for you--a lot cheaper than your doctor or your pharmacist. And, in case you forgot, God expects us to do all we can to protect ourselves by living responsibly. Washing our hands regularly is part of that responsible living. 

https://globalhandwashing.org/global-handwashing-day/about-ghd/

Post 127—Human Plumbing and Culture

I hope you’re ready for another session on human plumbing and how we manage its product.  That management, as we will see today, is usually related to the dominant local culture.  In the last post, we saw how at least some Indians still manage it in a pretty primitive way. Now I don’t know enough about Indian culture to demonstrate my thesis firmly on the influence of culture on the matter, but I can at least make a guess. The Indian practice described in Post 126 must have been influenced by at least two factors.

One of them would be a general traditional ignorance of the impact of hygiene on health. First of all, the people would not be aware that defecating all over the place creates hygienic problems. Secondly, they would not be aware of the danger to health such unhygienic practice creates. Flies crawling all over the excrement and then carrying it with them wherever they go, including humans and food. Well, we know what happens from there on, but those people do not. They are blissfully ignorant of it and so continue to practice their unhealthy tradition. So, one cultural factor is general ignorance of hygiene.

The second cultural factor would be low level of technology combined with a poor economy. It takes a certain level technology and economy to devise better management of sewage. And that technology is pushed by growing awareness of the dangers of traditional practice. When people become aware of the danger, they will be motivated to take the bull by the horns and devise more healthy management practices. I have read various publications that claim the rapid increase in the health level of Westerners during the 19^th century was due more to the improvement in sewage systems than to improved medical science. And that came along with the general rise of technology—the Industrial Revolution, remember? 

Bring these two cultural developments together and you will soon have a management system that almost makes the sewage invisible so that the general population almost forgets about it. In any modern city like Vancouver, where I live, I am blissfully ignorant as to where mine goes, how it gets there and what happens to it. Never really think of it—until, of course, the system develops plumbing problems and then we call in a plumber with all her sophisticated equipment. “Her” did I say? Well, probably not. I have yet to meet a lady plumber!

But then there is an even deeper factor that can play a role—anthropology. That’s a fancy term referring to a culture’s view about human beings, who or what we are. I have lived for many years in a culture where the local chief was regarded a demi-god with all the men of the community in some way sharing that status. They could not imagine that gods would have such human problems as defecation and so they pretended the chief and all the man did not defecate. I don’t know how the chief handled that pretense, but for ordinary males this meant they would do their thing in the bush or forest. There were no toilets in such communities, for that would entail an unwanted admission. So everyone else, women and children, though no demi-gods, also had no choice but the bush, for no provisions for them were made either. Not only were there no provisions, but no one would speak about the subject. It was a taboo.

A breakthrough came. After decades of missionary work in the area, the myth began to break down. The young church was one of the first to build a toilet in the town. It was a simple structure of a grass matting surrounding a deep hole. But it was built only a few feet away from the well from which they drew the water needed for the church’s cooking events!  The people did not see the dangerous connection! 

Another breakthrough came, a negative one: a cholera plague that killed many people in just a few days. The local government medical officer quickly called a meeting of all the religious leaders of the two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam. He begged these leaders to preach on the need for hygiene, including toilets, to contain the plague. It so happens it was my turn to preach that Sunday.  

I decided to preach on an Old Testament text that instructed the people to bury their excrement in a hole outside the camp.

 Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves. Along with your weapons have a stick with you. After you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the stick and cover your excrement.God, your God, strolls through your camp; He’s present…. Keep your camp holy; don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes (The Message, Deuteronomy 23:12-13).

 I knew it was culturally inappropriate to speak about such matters. So I consulted a church elder and friend who was to translate my Hausa-language sermon into another language. He advised me I should go ahead and preach that sermon and promised to translate faithfully, even if it was culturally inappropriate. So I did. I preached a sentence or two and he would translate. So we would alternate. Suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, a very influential man stood up and yelled something in the local language which I did not understand. My translator brushed it off and told me to continue, but my heart was out of it. After the service, I was told that man yelled that the translator should not beat around the bush! Say it as I said it! However, my sermon was not lost on most, for they understood the Hausa language.

Thus, another humorous story, but also an indication how culture can influence such matters. Though comparatively free from that tradition, it was not enough for him to translate the message straight. However, people did begin to construct toilets in their compounds. A combination of disease, new awareness and the gospel brought about a radical change in the way the people saw themselves and that, in turn, led to a breakdown of that particular tradition—and did so for the good of the entire community. I never learned how this was solved for the chief himself or what effect this may have had on his alleged semi-divinity. I do know that the church did not openly challenge it ever but played along with it good naturedly, even though over time the chiefs were all Christian.