Olympic Primary School Joins the Club

Maji na Ufanisi team explains Drogba Handwashing Poster

 

On Saturday, September 18th 2010, WASH United Kenya in collaboration with Maji na Ufanisi organized a Safe drinking Water and Sanitation awareness Campaign at Olympic Primary School in Nairobi’s Kibera area. The goal was to raise awareness and sensitization on the need to improve sanitation in the community with specific emphasis on young children who are the most adversely affected by waterborne and germ related diseases, in a bid to achieve sustainable behavior change, particularly with regard to hand washing with clean water and soap, to reduce diseases attributed to dirty water, lack of toilets and poor hygiene.More than 270 students flocked the event with school children aged between 8-15 years being the majority, pupils from class 3-6. Most of them were drawn from the wash club that had been initiated earlier on by water and development. Punctuality was impressively kept by the pupils, with some of them reporting as early as 7 a.m despite Saturday being a weekend. 98% of these children come from one of the largest slums in Africa.Games and other recreational activities were employed to facilitate the awareness campaign. At the school playground games such as the World Toilet Cup Game, Blue Hand Game and Play Hand Game hit the interest of most pupils in school. During the World Toilet Cup Game, the cheering squad would applaud for a score and clapped for a miss. Among the words heard during the loss of a score was “ameuza ball” which means a missed scoring chance.One of the students was chosen to record the scores: girls versus boys. The boys won with a slight margin but the girls remained happy because they had challenged the boys and almost defeated them in a game usually dominated by boys. Following the event, the children were taught the significance of the World Toilet Cup Game. The children were made aware of what every item symbolized; the brown ball for "poo" and the hole target or the goal target for "loo". Questions were used to gather ideas and lesson learnt from them, for instance “Ule hakulenga ball kwa shimo amefanya?”, “what did the loser do?” Most of them would answer with laughter “hakupima shimo vizuri, amekunia juu!”, “his poo did not land in the toilet but rather beside it.”Students were given a brief made-up story of Mariga: When he was young he used to be clean. He went to the toilet and hit the loo target, washed his hands before eating and did not forget to wash his hand after using the toilet. By doing so he did not become ill. He remained healthy and had enough energy to play to become an international football superstar. They all agreed to follow Mariga’s footsteps and stay strong and healthy like him.