Practitioner Experience Notes (PENs)

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The faeces on the walkway wasn’t ignorance. It was fear of night-time assault.

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Attribution: SCUK Alumna
PEN Type: Field Experience (Programme Delivery)
Main country: Thailand
Other countries: Cambodia
Project Themes: Operations & Field Leadership, Protection, Safety, Risk & Security, Humanitarian
Role: Field worker
Mission brief: A refugee camp out of the grasp of the Khmer Rough we hoped.
Audience: Frontline / Field, Programme / Project, Country or Regional Management
Geographic applicability: Global / broad applicability
Dates: 1978 → 1982
Advice Summary: Cultural stereotyping is not only wrong it can be dangerous in our work. Build relationships so you can ask the right questions. People will help you to help them if they can - you just have to ask.
Key words/phrases: latrines, night-time safety, rape, trafficking, WASH/protection link, posters, interpreter insight
Operational snapshot
  • Work pattern: sunrise to sunset; ‘no teams allowed to stay overnight for security reasons’
  • Observed issue: ‘puddles — many — of faeces’ on walkways each morning
  • Infrastructure: extensive latrines at the edges of the camp
The story A team of epidemiologists arrived (Berkeley, San Francisco — and they ‘thought they were the bees knees’). We told them about the faeces problem. They returned with posters: stick figure squatting with a red cross; stick figure on a Western toilet with a green tick. Then they tacked them up all over clinics and hospital buildings. My interpreter was furious — and rightly so. She said: ‘Please tell your American friends we are not stupid… But when you all go home at night, women and girls, plus many boys cannot go to the latrines. The Thai soldiers grab them, rape them and then sell them to the brothels in Bangkok.’ What I learned (and what it changed)
  • I felt terrible — because operational focus and exhaustion can make you blind to what you ‘damn well should know.’
  • It can be dangerous to make it obvious that you know what’s happening; informers can be killed (and some were). Fixing the problem needs street smarts and care.
Lessons learned
  • If behaviour looks irrational, ask: what risk is this behaviour reducing?
  • Don’t default to ‘hygiene education’ when the driver may be violence.
  • Treat interpreters/local staff as analysts, not just translators.
  • Handle disclosures carefully; protect sources while you act.
What I’d tell my younger self Before you print posters, ask who is safe at night — and who isn’t.