Art for Gorillas

Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Jul 03 2009 | By: Julie

Cleaning Classrooms, Toilets, and the Rainwater Tank

For the second blog in my Staying Healthy Where There Is No Running Water series, here are photos and art work by the children depicting how they use the water from their rainwater tanks to clean the school facilities.

School teacher Michel hauls an arm full of brooms with red bristles donated by AoC. These and other supplies will be used to clean the school facilities.

It is customary in Rwandan government run schools for the students, as opposed to the teachers, to clean the classrooms and toilets. The illustrations above show everyone joining in the cleaning.

Illustration of cleaning toilet stalls with a mop and a broom. AoC has suggested that the schools also drop ash down the toilets to reduce the odor and help in decomposing fecal matter.

I paint numbers on all brooms and other supplies to indicate which classroom or toilet stall each belongs. After doing an initial inspection to see if teachers are following through with the numbering system it’s clear it will be a challenge. Unfortunately, I think in situations where people are used to receiving a lot of aid, the ethic of shared responsibility is weak.

We ask students to illustrate their acts of good hygiene to stress that these simple habit forming activities for staying healthy are not just folly. The students creating these paintings must surely be grasping this reality better.

Beautiful buckets, jerry cans, and locally made soap are marked with the schools name and classroom number. I go out of my mind with how some school supplies simply ‘walk off’ and disappear. We are definitely trying to discourage that!

Tags: one-health, staying healthy