Sick and Tired

I came to Haiti to help people who got sick from the water and food. Now I am sick from the water and food. This wasn’t the plan. It’s tough getting sick when you travel. It’s tougher when you are sick in a third world country. When you are sick at your stomach and running a fever—you want to be home.

Lately, I think I have gained a greater appreciation for toilets. Coming from Seattle, I remember the hilarious tours of Underground Seattle. The history of Seattle’s development was a story of trying to figure out how to make toilets work at an extremely low elevation. But I am glad someone persevered to find a solution. We take for granted our sanitation today so much we don’t even think about it. But think about it for a minute. What would you do without the ability to flush?

Bill Gates is offering big money to anyone who can figure out a new way to do toilets in areas of poverty. I applaud him. I wish he had got to Haiti quicker. But so many diseases and the lack of health among today’s poor can be traced back to this one issue.

2.5 billion people in our world don’t have a good toilet to go to. Can you imagine the health and safety implications of this? Bad sanitation is one of the world’s biggest killers. Every minute three children under the age of five die from poor water or bad sanitation. The lack of toilets makes women and girls a target for sexual assault as they go in the open late at night. For every dollar spent on water and sanitation programs eight dollars is returned through saved time, increased productivity, and reduced health costs. In Africa half of the young girls who drop out of school do so because they need to collect water usually from many miles away or because the school doesn’t have a toilet.

I’m getting better now. I’ll get back to the land of good toilets soon. But I have a great desire to see the good toilets get to the land I’m about to leave.

About Milt

Milton Jones is the President of Christian Relief Fund in Amarillo, Texas. In his work there, he has focused on the care of AIDS orphans in Sub-Sahara Africa. He has also served as a preacher and campus minister in both Texas and Washington. Milton has authored eight books including a touching tale of one of his heroes with Cerebral Palsy, Sundays With Scottie. He is married to Barbie Jones and has two sons, Patrick and Jeremy.
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