The official World Toilet Summit doesn’t start until
Wednesday, but the ‘Training on trainers’ portion of the event began today. This part of the summit is geared specifically at those in the culture and tourism industries who are looking for practical training on running toilet facilities.
The timing of my arrival (on the eve of this event) must
have caused some confusion, because I got a call at 8 in the morning saying as
I had missed the official transport I should get a taxi to the Sunan Hotel
where the conference is being held.
I had a hasty shower (cold… but I suppose the weather is
warm enough here that a hot shower is almost never really necessary.) and
stopped by the café for breakfast. There was a baffling array of foods I
wouldn’t normally associate with a morning meal (mostly noodles and meat), but
aware that I was already late for the start of the conference I played it safe
with toast and pineapple jam.
I can see the Sunan from my window, so it seemed quite silly
to take a taxi. Instead I set out to walk. The first and greatest challenge was
getting across the road. Crosswalks here are pretty much non-existant. One
simply plunges into the road, weaving through cars and motorcycles, which don’t
seem to ever slow down. Or, in my case one stands helplessly on the side of the
road until a nice escort appears to get me across, blowing a whistle and dodging with me in tow between the vehicles.
From the main road I walked along a much narrower and quieter street
with mostly squat houses in a hodgepodge of different styles and materials. It
took about ten minutes to find my way to the hotel. I went to check in, and
they handed me a training manual and directed me towards the conference room. I
tried to explain I hadn’t signed up to the sessions, but they just smiled and
nodded at me and continued to direct me into the conference room, so in I went.
I got in about half way through the welcoming speeches. Everything was in
Indonesian, with the odd English phrase here and there.
The first training unit was also in Indonesian, though a lot
of the slides were in English, so I had some clue as to what was going on. The
topic was ‘Restroom Service Quality’ and it was largely about customer service
and representation. Restrooms should be high quality both functionally and
aesthetically (‘look, feel, sound and smell’… all the five senses save for
taste, which is probably not one you want to have to think about in the context
of toilets.)
Probably the most useful element of the day was chatting
with Juliet from the World Toilet Organization at the break. She was
particularly keen to talk about the importance of toilets in schools. I tried
to explain very briefly what I was doing there and my own interest in
sanitation and she seemed mildly amused by my business card (which has my title
as ‘The Loo Tour Lady’. I had debated something with more gravity, but decided,
for better or worse that ‘gravity’ is not the USP of what I do, so I may as
well keep the amusement factor right from the outset.
She made the connection that story telling and performance are a particularly important way of spreading messages in Africa (and so another piece of my MA in Applied Theatre falls into place… why the use of Theatre for Development is particularly important in certain cultures.)
She made the connection that story telling and performance are a particularly important way of spreading messages in Africa (and so another piece of my MA in Applied Theatre falls into place… why the use of Theatre for Development is particularly important in certain cultures.)
I left after the coffee break, figuring I would do some
exploring. There was nothing of particular tourist interest of note nearby, so
I just wandered and soaked in the atmosphere. The atmosphere involves a lot of
honking. With an apparent lack of traffic signals or rules it seems to be the
general practice to honk at every opportunity. It also turns out Solo is very
much not a walking city. I couldn’t go more than two minutes without being
offered a taxi. After wandering for about a half hour I finally accepted the
offer of a bicycle rickshaw to get back to the hotel (which was 20,000 rupees-
or about £2.)
I’d give quite a lot to have a local guide. It’s very hard
(especially when jetlagged) to be on your own in a completely foreign country.
Flipping through the remainder of the ‘Trainers on training’
handbook back in my room I fount the experience I would most like to have: a
unit on Tourism Villages. A tourism village is ‘a destination where the tourist
can experience living in a village’ and participate in home-stays, local jobs
(plowing, farming), learning traditional dance and crafts and cooking
traditional food.
The concept is developed by the Ministry of Tourism and
Creative Economy and has been running since 2008. And of course toilets come
into play. The improvement of toilets in villages is important to make tourists
comfortable. ‘The number of homestays has increased … after “the clean toilet
program.”’ The village of Penting Sari had 9 international tourists in 2008,
and 511 in 2012.
A closely related concept is Eco Tourism. The main emphasis
of the ‘eco’ here is not only ‘ecological’ but ‘economic’. It is tourism which
is meant to boost economic development and political empowerment of local
communities.
In 2011 Habitat for Humanity partnered with Asia Pulp and
paper to bring the struggling village of Soran to its feet by making it a
tourist destination by capitalizing on its traditions of song and dance.
Anthropologically there’s lots of ethical debate about this.
Arguments abound that turning culture into commodity somehow defiles it and
makes it ‘staged’ instead of ‘authentic.’ An article by Cathering Allerton outlines
it pretty well, describing the tensions between the gaze of the outsider and
the invisible but perhaps much more important rituals and mentalities that make
up a culture. She notes a villages use of the term ‘authentic tourist’ as a
village’s description of that ilk of tourists who don’t speak the language or
have any particular academic interest in the culture.
Other arguments aside, from a sanitary point of view I am
sure that most people (tourists and villagers alike) would be perfectly happy to
forgo an authentic experience of diarrhea, and any other experiences that come
with poor sanitation.
I suppose it’s not as simple as that though, because
sanitary reform involves re-training one aspect of culture both architecturally
and psychologically, so back round again the arguments of preservation verses
progress. It’s not the question of whether
toilets should be done, but of how
they should be done that sparks heated debate.
Back in the hotel my intentions to study and work were
sabotaged by a three hour nap attack. When I had regained consciousness I
wandered down to the hotel's nearly vacant restaurant. The lovely man who served
me was quite insistant that a burger was what I should order, and I was too
tired at this point to argue that I wanted to sample Indonesia cuisine, so a burger I had. My eating was supervised by
the large iconic portrait of Audrey Hepburn on the opposite wall and
accompanied by a Jessie J singing that ‘it isn’t ‘bout the money money money…’
singularly appropriate to my musings of late.
On many levels it is about the ‘money money money’… but the
money is only a superficial sign of a wide range of deeper motives.
