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Kathmandu Wednesday September 26, 2001 Ashwin 10, 2058.
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It took Khokana residents 20 yrs
to realise the need of toilets
By Razen Manandhar
KHOKANA (Lalitpur), Sept 25 - It is better late than never. That is what the
people of this laid-back village on the outskirts of Kathmandu prove.
It took nearly 20 years for the residents here to realise the need for the
construction of toilets in their houses.
Khokana is a small village about 12 kilometres south of Kathmandu with a
population of around 4,000.
"Though late, we now feel that we really need toilets in our homes and
for the cleanliness in the village," says Nati Maharjan, while digging a ditch along
the stone-paved street.
Maharjan is one of the villagers here who has now become more aware of the
need for proper toilets.
It was in 1981 that the Ministry of Local Development and UNICEF had jointly
constructed 331 toilets in the village on their expenses. Though many households possessed
toilets then, very few of them used it. They drew technical drawbacks of the toilets and
stuck to their old habit, i.e., going to the open fields.
But the villagers here have now learnt the importance of using proper
toilets. People here are now busy digging ditches and laying drainage pipes to construct
toilets in their homes.
The villagers, a majority of them farmers and some job holders, are offering
their time everyday to voluntarily dig ditches and do masonry work to lay drainage pipes
in their locality to construct new toilets in their homes. Even the school children feel
happy to see the drainage that will give outlet to their house-toilets being constructed
in old times. A very few households in the village now have toilets.
"This is a remarkable change in our village," says Madan Krishna
Dangol, chairman of the Khokana Village Development Committee. "The villagers here
have realised on their own that they need the toilets without depending on any NGOs,"
Dangol said.
Till now, the drainage is being constructed in Kwalachhi, Nhu Dhoka, Baakha
Chaur, Jhyaku Chhen, Gabu, Nanicha, Chochen Pampa and Thalachhi areas in the last three
years. He said, "The VDC plans to complete the project by this month."
Dangol said that the VDC has almost used the entire rural self-reliance
budget in the last three years to complete the network of sewerage in the densely
populated village with complicated house plans.
"In the past, the villagers did not feel the need for toilets as they
use to go to the fields while population was quite sparse," said Dangol. "This
way, our traditional method of making compost fertilisers was in use as well."
But as modernisation began to engulf this isolated village, villagers forgot
the traditional techniques of managing solid waste but could not accept the new ones. This
resulted in unmanaged garbage and bad sanitation," Dangol further said.
Khokana is known for the people’s extraordinary attachment to the
village’s prime deity Rudrayani and traditional lifestyle.
The home-processed mustard oil is one of the most
popular products of this village. But this too has begun to dwindle as the time changed.
But the UNESCO provided assistance to revive this traditional technology.
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