[Never let it be said we are not flush with toilet stories.]

Flying Toilets: a First Earth Summit Test? September 05, 2002 10:03 AM ET By Matthew Green

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Martha Njoki jumped when she heard a thud on the corrugated iron roof of her shack.

Seconds later, she was confronted with a familiar sight.

"I heard a bang on the roof, and when I went outside to look, I saw it was a plastic bag full of human waste," she said, gesturing toward her dwelling in the slums of Nairobi.

"You might just be relaxing in your house, then you hear a noise on your roof and someone has thrown a bag of sewage up there," said Njoki, 27, wrinkling her nose with disgust.

There are only five toilets for the more than 2,000 people living in the slum known as "Ghetto" -- a fetid labyrinth of claustrophobic dirt lanes and streams of stinking effluent.

For most people here, the "flying toilets" are the only way of answering nature's call: you simply use a plastic bag, then fling it as far out of sight as possible.

World leaders at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg pledged on Wednesday to halve the number of people in the world who do not have access to basic sanitation by 2015.

Walk into "Ghetto," or any one of scores of slum settlements housing two million people in the Kenyan capital, and the scale of the task for one African city alone seems staggering.

At almost every turn, a sickly sweet stench of urine wafts from between the huts. Barefoot children play by trenches frothing with scum. The edges are strewn with telltale bags.

"First thing in the morning, the flying toilets are rampant," said Njoki, as a gaggle of other women in a courtyard nodded in agreement. "Sometimes you are walking down the path and you see human waste, people have just thrown it there."

Consider that Njoki and her neighbors are just a handful of 2.4 billion people worldwide who lack access to decent sanitation, and the scale of the Earth Summit pledge seems even more mind-boggling.

In Njoki's neighborhood, the only sign of hope comes not from the government -- who consider much of the slums a virtual no-go zone -- but from residents determined to help themselves.

On the edge of the sea of rusting iron roofs stands the only public toilet around.

Four women got together to build the facility three years ago -- paying off their investment with the two shillings ($0.02) a time paid by 50 or so visitors each day.

On Sundays, when the toilet attendants say many residents decide to treat themselves, the number of users rises to 100.

-- Anonymous, September 05, 2002

Answers

World leaders at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg pledged on Wednesday to halve the number of people in the world who do not have access to basic sanitation by 2015.

Sterilization? Starvation? How?

Sounds like they're gonna go around cutting people in half.

-- Anonymous, September 05, 2002

Aren't they going around doing that in places like Rwanda, Congo and so on?

-- Anonymous, September 06, 2002

[Note irony: Solomon Islands.]

Woman Finds Husband's Head on Beach Thu Sep 5,10:02 AM ET

HONIARA (Reuters) - A woman searching for her missing husband found his severed head on a beach in the strife-torn Solomon Islands, police said on Thursday.

Police said it appeared the man, who disappeared on Wednesday, had been beheaded, but they could not say whether it was linked to fighting between rival ethnic militia which has lefts hundreds dead in the past two years.

"Details of the incident are sketchy but reports we have received is that the man, a Seventh Day Adventist deacon from Veramogho Village in the Weathercoast area had gone to a nearby village," police spokesman Charles Lemoa told Reuters.

"But when he failed to return, his wife went to search for him but only found his head which has been cut off and left without the rest of the body on the beach.

"At this stage the motive for this cruel killing is not known but we are investigating it."

Shootings and robberies are commonplace in the troubled South Pacific nation, with armed ethnic militiamen operating with virtual immunity. Police are outgunned and unable to investigate killings in areas controlled by local warlords.

Fighting between militias over land and jobs in the capital Honiara flared in June 2000. The enmity goes back to World War II, when many people from Malaita island moved to Guadalcanal, the Solomons' main island, angering another ethnic group.

The fighting has crippled the Solomons' economy, which is now being propped up by aid, and left hundreds dead.

-- Anonymous, September 06, 2002