Cellphones vs. Toilets?
Did you know?
On our planet of 7 billion people,
there are about 3 billion toilets
compared to 6 billion active
cellular phones.
At the largest refugee camp in the world, 19-square-mile Dadaab in northeastern Kenya, the intake center had long lines of exhausted, barefoot people waiting for food. After trudging for days or weeks from famine-ravaged Somalia while trying to avoid attacks along the way by lions, hyenas and armed bandits, they joined the throng of humanity in what is essentially a city of a half million people and growing daily. What was amazing to the visitor (Erin Mote, a tech evangelist as reported in the November 2012 issue of Success Magazine) was how many of the arriving refugees had a cellphone-some 60 percent!
In a scene that “could be straight from downtown Nairobi” a Guardian reporter separately described two girls in that refugee camp typing on a mobile phone to interact with friends on Facebook.
Similarly, in one of the world’s biggest slums, Kibera in Mairobi, Kenya, one of the most prolific micro-businesses involves providing mobile phone charge-up services and the sale of minutes for prepaid cellphones to folks who live without electricity or indoor plumbing in rusted tin-roofed shacks.
Indeed, far more people around the world have mobile phones than toilets. This fascinates Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, who has a tough sell getting poor people to buy a $35 toilet (and forgo all the inconvenience, unpleasantness, and health issues associated with not having one), while they scramble to pay about the same for a simple cellphone.
Last March, Erin Mote told folks this last March at the Chopra Foundation’s Sages and Scientists Symposium that the cellphone revolution is even upending
Andrew Maslow’s famous pyramid
The Hierarchy of Needs.
The pyramid assumes we all want to satisfy physical needs (including toilet matters) before worrying about the next rungs up the pyramid: safety and, farther up, friendship and belonging, and still farther up, respect of others.
And yet, as we think about it, folks’ needs for connection/friendship supports their safety through their use of the cellphone. It enables them to connect with family and friends in emergencies.
Who hasn’t seen the photos and messages from folks in war zones, telling where not to be, and proving what is happening regardless of verbal denials from officials.
So, do we take both toilets AND cellphones for granted?
Of course we do!
But let’s not judge others for having cellphones instead of toilets (or homes!)
They too have that primary need to be able to connect, to share, to know that they too can reach out for help, support (even fun!)
What do you think about this shift in seemingly primary needs?
2 Comments
Well, as a former Public Health Nurse, I have the obvious concerns for health that arise from poor sanitation. I certainly ‘get’ the need to connect for safety as well as belonging, but at what human/health cost? And are the needs really built one upon the other as Maslow suggested? I’m thinking, not necessarily. The needs may be simultaneous. Do we have to make people choose? (ie Finish meeting this need before moving up to the next one.) Well, perhaps we do in areas such as refugee camps or unbelievably depressed areas, but maybe not. Perhaps reframing this to include both items somehow as a seemingly single unit rather than as individual, separate expenses. That may not be at all practical, but hey, stranger things have happened.
In the toilet example you mentioned, I personally would opt to really ‘push’ the toilet first and encourage and support them doing the phone next. But that’s my more ‘nursey’ sort of take on things.
As good as cell phones are at helping people stay connected, I frankly still think having proper (read that ‘safe’) sanitation and water issues met would need to come just a little bit before. But of course this comes from someone who uses a cell phone only once or twice a month…..
Fay,
Thanks for your very insightful response! I particularily will be thinking about your “take” on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see if perhaps it could be viewed less compartmentalized. I’ll be looking for a different concept than a pyramid and I’ll share it when I find it!
(And I’m tickled that you realize your use of a cell phone could be considered “abnormal” or maybe that is “subnormal”?)