Kim digging away inside the latrine hole.Reflections from ENLACE volunteer, Kim Frederick, on a week spent digging a hole in the rain.
Rain poured down in Las Animas last week as a team from the New Life Assemblies of God Church in Exeter, California chipped away at the hard ground in an effort to dig two latrines for families in need. As I so conveniently learned in graduate school, latrines play a major role in the health of a community by reducing fly propagation, water contamination, and the spread of disease. In fact, access to sanitation facilities, clean water, and preventive health education have been proven to reduce infant mortality rates by 50%... If only they could have explained to us, in grad school, what it is like to be deep inside the earth after the ladder is taken away, alone with only a shovel and a thought that someday where you are standing will be filled with human waste.
