WaterAid, in the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Oasis, has this: ‘Some West African men refuse to wash their hands because “the cleaner your hands are the more likely you are to drop your money. They think it’s better to have sticky hands”.’
And, even more amazingly, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has this in relation to why women in the largest slum in Karachi won’t use water purification tablets (here): ‘The major excuse that these women have is that they fear these tablets will render [their men] impotent.’
Hygiene education ain’t always as easy as you might think!
About Me
- Duncan Mara
- University of Leeds, United Kingdom
- I'm an emeritus professor of civil engineering at the University of Leeds in England. I've been working on low-cost sanitation in developing countries since the mid-1970s, and also on low-cost wastewater treatment and reuse. I was a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, 1970-73 and then a senior lecturer at the University of Dundee, Scotland, 1974-79 before moving to Leeds in late 1979. I was a visiting professor of sanitary engineering at the Universidade Federal da Paraiba in Campina Grande, northeast Brazil, during 1976-95, and since 1996 I have been a visiting professor of environmental engineering at the Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.