Hygiene Tips

Bathroom = Luxury! This week Tula is talking about personal hygiene with our families and how to set-up a Health Corner in our women's houses. Many of the women use outdoor latrines and don't have an indoor bathroom. This makes it difficult to have what we consider a complete and clean hygiene space with mirror, towel, and all our personal hygiene supplies in one convenient location. This week and next Tula will help the women set-up their hygiene corners with a mirror, towel, shelf or recycled plastic bottle for soap, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, etc.. Some of our women have already set-up their hygiene corner because they were inspired by other families who had implemented something similar from our Health Field Trip.


I learn something new everytime I go to a health session. The health session this week included a comical theater performance, hand-washing demonstration (which all the women were listening intently), and some great culturally sensitive tips: If you don't have deodorant, use lime! If you don't have soap, use ashes - which has cleaning powers when combined with water.


All this talk about water is a sore subject for me. For the past 5 days I haven't had ANY water in my house. It is an awful, horrible feeling not to have even a drip come out of the faucet. The problem was solved this morning when I awoke at 6am to the sweet sound of running water. I jumped out of bed to start cleaning! I wanted to take advantage of having running water, a luxury I would take for granted in the U.S. I know many of our families in village banks have these same water struggles and out of necessity are creative and resourceful to make their households run with minimal water. This in turn creates roadblocks to hygiene. But, knowing our women, they figure out a way.


Paz ~ Nora