by TONOPAH GREENLEE
The first big squat in Singapore. PHOTO/World Toilet Organization.
After college I moved to Sub-Saharan Africa for a year. During that time I learned a myriad of useful skills. I learned to kill a chicken and prepare a traditional meal. I mastered dancing like a “true African.” I could barter my way through any market. And I learned how to urinate in the open. In fact, I became so good at urinating in public I have since taken this skill with me to every major city I have visited that lacks adequate public restrooms or does not maintain the ones they have. I can say with the utmost confidence, I can pee like one of the boys.
But I never mastered, nor attempted, openly defecating. In truth, it was not something I spent much time thinking about until a few months ago when I came to work for the World Toilet Organization in Singapore. In many ways this is backwards. I lived in one of the poorest regions of the world where open defecation is a fact of everyday life, and never thought about it, only to move to one of the richest countries in the world where sanitation is at 100 percent, and I think about it every day.
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