Those are the words of Rose George, the title of her moving and informative piece in yesterday’s Huffington Post.   Reporting from Mozambique, George recounts the reactions of group of villagers at the moment they realize the consequences of toiletlessness.

Here’s what happens:  a delicious plate of meat and rice is placed in the middle of the circle of people sitting on the ground.  Not far away is placed a paper with human feces gathered from the open field where villagers defecate.  Soon enough,flies gather on the shit and on the food.

“Are those different flies?” Muianga [the facilitator] asked the crowd. “No,” said one man. “They are the same.” He looked appalled. This is known as the “triggering moment”… It is when villagers realize — but aren’t instructed — that if they defecate in the open, they must be eating their own and their neighbor’s shit, because it’s on their feet and hands; on the claws of their chickens and the paws of their dogs.

This controversial approach to awareness through disgust is called Community Led Total Sanitation.    In many ways, CTLS insults people and is manipulative.   But no other approach has brought sustainable change.   Participants can no longer face the reality of what they are ingesting and set to work building latrines.  Social pressure works to clear the commons of human waste.  Eventually, villages vie for the coveted public status of ODF, complete with an attractive signboard on the road to the village.  ODF stands for Open Defecation Free.

Downtown Portland is not ODF.  And public urination clearly persists. Now that we’re finally making progress with the hardware of toilets, can we learn anything about the software from these impoverished residents of a village in Mozambique?

Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human (PHLUSH) has accepted the invitation from the World Toilet Organization (WTO) to share Portland’s experience in increasing the availability of public restrooms.  As an all-volunteer grassroots group, we now need to call on the community to help send two speakers to the World Toilet Summit & Expo in Singapore this December.

Our two 20-minute presentations entitled Public Restroom Design for 21st Century US Cities:  The PHLUSH Principles and Innovations in Sustainable Design:  Case studies from Portland, Oregon are available here.

Our fiscal sponsor, Neighbors West-Northwest, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization is accepting tax deductible donations to support PHLUSH travel.  Checks (with “PHLUSH” in the memo line) may be mailed to Neighbors West-Northwest, 2257 NW Raleigh St., Portland, OR 97210. Contributions may also be made online (please add special instruction “PHLUSH” before hitting send).

The World Toilet Summit will enable  PHLUSH participants to become familiar with innovative and sustainable technologies, receive training unavailable elsewhere, and collaborate with international urban sanitation experts.   The City of Portland will be recognized for its successes in urban design and livability and will benefit from our promotion of the Portland Loo as an environmentally and socially sustainable model for cities worldwide.

For four years PHLUSH has worked to increase public restroom availability in Portland through well-focused citizen advocacy and practical, informed collaboration with local officials, non-profits and business owners.    Now is the time to help PHLUSH take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity.