b Designated Defecation Spot. When mothers consider their children too young to use the latrine, a common alternative is what can be described as “designated defecation spots.” These appear frequently throughout the data as specific places other than the latrine where mothers teach their young children to defecate when they are pressed, until they are old enough to use the latrine. Ten out of twelve participants mentioned one or more specific places outside of the latrine where they teach their young children to defecate. Designated defecation spots (DDS) vary among families, and can include the ground under specific trees in the family compound, beside the house, or behind the latrine. They also sometimes include plastic potties or newspapers onto which mothers encourage their children to defecate. Mothers assist children in using these designated defecation spots, or teach them to defecate there without assistance. Then, the mother will go to the assigned spot either immediately following defecation or as soon as possible, and will collect the child’s feces and dispose of them in the latrine. Three participants mentioned that they also clean their child with water after he has defecated. Feces are viewed as distasteful, embarrassing, and potentially offensive to visitors. For this reason, the behaviors classified during this analysis as involving “designated defecation spots” can be distinguished as different from open defecation (OD) because they are more structured, organized, and allow mothers to have control over where their children defecate throughout the compound. Mothers often perceived random, uncontrolled defecation behaviors to be unclean and uncouth, and several mothers listed various places within the compound where they actively discouraged their children from openly defecating. These forbidden spots included anywhere near or inside the house, close to a water source, and in the shamba (garden). One frequent reason for this was that many mothers perceived a link between open defecation and disease transmission. For example, several mothers mentioned a disease that could be transmitted by stepping on feces, and that caused one’s legs and feet to scratch: “When you dig in the samba [garden] when he [a child] has defecated there, then you can be infected with a disease of scratching the legs.” (V1 R1) “We do use the well for drinking water, and when they defecate around there, when people come to fetch water, they step on the dirt (germs) and while fetching water the germs...
