Delvhain Duo digs the wet sandy ground in front of her three room house, for her 9-year-old son, Rahinha to toilet. No one knows better than Madam Duo, the risks of burying feces here.
Rahinha is the first of 27-year-old Madam Duo's three children. But now there are only two. Last year her youngest, Elisha, was only 18 months old, when he became sick.
"His stomach ran for three days. The third day it was water toilet, but he was screaming himself just like his butt, something wanted to come outside," said Madam Duo. "That's how we carried him to the hospital, and he did not survive."
The diarrhea that killed little Elisha likely came from contaminated water he drank, or the food he ate, perhaps from burying feces as Madam Duo is doing now. She knows this. But she does it anyway. She says she has no choice.
"No toilet for us. We can dig hole and toilet inside. When we dig like that, that's the same area they can go play," Madam Duo said. "The place that we can dig, when the real dry season comes, that's the same place we can cook. That's how it is going on in our community here."
Improperly disposed of feces can contaminate waterways and food leading to diseases like dysentery, diarrhea and cholera. Thousands of Liberians, including babies, are becoming sick and dying from waterborne diseases each year. Sickness is also causing time from work, undercutting economic growth.
But still three in every five people outside Liberia's cities have no choice according to the World Bank. There are no toilets for them to use. Limited access to safe water to cook, and drink compounds the problem. Liberia made progress on access to toilets since the war, but the numbers without access are still among the highest in the world.
That's a tragedy for families, and a brake on economic progress according to WASH expert Eugene Caine.
"When we continue to practice open defecation, and poor sanitation, there is an economic impact that is negative," Mr. Caine said. "We lose so much with people being sick; people not going to activities that require them to provide for themselves."
Madam Duo's community is a good example of the challenges in improving access to toilets in rural areas. Her village, known as Christian Community, actually has three government toilets, according to Mambahn's Town Chief, Robert Cooper.
The town charges $LD10, or 5 US cents, for each use, to pay for maintainence of the facilities. But most people refuse to use them. For Liberia's poor - 60 percent now live below the World Bank poverty threshhold of $2.15 a day - even that small cost is too much.
"Just to pay little bit of $LD10 to maintain the place, they are not able," said Town Chief Cooper. "You have to pay people to draw the water, soap, and chlorine. They prefer going in the bush."
But awareness raising has been a problem. Madam Duo said she would be willing to pay to use the toilets but this is the first she has heard of them. Either way, they are too far from her house to be of use.
In this community, as in others across the country, there have been efforts to compel people to install toilets whenever a new house is built. But the cost - $US200 to $US300 - is too much for most according to Chief Cooper.
One makeshift toilet serves 4000 people in Nyekambo, Maryland County where health problems are constant. Credit: Moses Geply
Progress on water and sanitation stalled under President George Weah according to World Bank data. An FPA/New Narratives investigation in 2023 found twenty eight thousand communities still needed to be reached. Twenty three hundred had reached the status of "open defecation free". But in many cases that had been an illusion. Toilets weren't maintained or were too far from where they lived or worked. Rural dwellers slipped back into their old ways.
Experts say no investment delivers a higher return than water, and sanitation. Every dollar spent delivers four dollars in economic returns. Yet Liberia is spending - about $US45 million a year - far below what's needed for serious progress according to the World Bank. It's not helped by the low priority the issue has received from governments. Less than one per cent of the total $45 million came from the Weah government.
Timothy Kpeh, a board member of the Liberia WASH CSO Network in Monrovia, is angry that progress has stalled.
"There is no reason somebody should die from water borne diseases in this country when we have enough water," Mr. Kpeh said. "We have enough resources to provide the necessary water, but just the political will we need, and the willingness of the government to take the lead."
A tigerworm toilet, in Monrovia, installed by Oxfam, produces compost that families can use on gardens. Photo by Tommy Trenchard/Oxfam
WASH experts had hoped to see the Boakai administration show a greater commitment after identifying WASH as a priority in its governing manifesto. David Yango is the new CEO of the Liberia Water Sanitation and Hygiene Commission. He insists there will be improvements but did not give details.
"The President is saying this is not business as usual," Mr. Yango said in an interview. "I think we are moving in the right direction. The Commission is trying to get a foot-hold on how we can be able to coordinate properly."
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But Mr. Kpen says the government cannot be serious unless it massively increases the two percent of the national budget that is currently allocated to the sector.
"Demonstrate your political will by putting the necessary resources in the sector," Mr. Kpeh said. "You can't be a government that is putting less than 2 percent in the sector and you say you want to achieve 2030 agenda, it's not possible."
He says government must show donors - who currently pay for 99 percent of WASH improvements in the country - that it is serious.
"The partners, they will not do all for the government," Mr. Kpeh said. "And what our governments over the years failed to understand is that donor support without government ownership is not sustainable."
Meanwhile the Duo family is mourning their lost boy Elisha. As she swats away flies that move from feces to trouble their food and water, Madam Duo said she worries about her remaining children.
"I can be worrying about my son Rahinha, and the flies can come over our food. The same thing that happened, of course I don't want for it to happen to the other children but still..."
For now every meal and every drink carry the risk of death.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives. Funding came from the US Embassy. The funder had no say in the story's content.
