the community on hygiene and sanitation, but many
people resisted these efforts and did not welcome or listen
to the VHTs. During an FGD with VHTs in Kyetume,
one said:
Some of them were very stubborn and not willing to
cooperate with us. They would even ask us who
made us their boss. They claimed that the
government had given us money to construct toilets
but instead we were asking the households to do it
themselves!
A similar scenario was mentioned in an FGD with
VHTs in Sakabusolo, when another VHT member described
their challenges:
We went somewhere and then a man wanted to cut
us with machete. He was arguing that he was poor
and we [had] come to tell him useless things. He said
that if we want them to have a toilet, we should build
it. He claimed that we are being paid a lot of money.
One day I tried to explain that we volunteer but no
one believed [me]. They demanded that we share the
money with them.
In an interview, Tito, a VHT member, said that VHTs
believed that they might have more success in groups
because community members might know at least one
member of the VHT:
We decided to go in groups to avoid those questions
from the community. They will surely not say “who
are you?” when she comes with other VHTs whom
they know.
When asked if it would not be simpler to do a oneon-one
visit between a VHT and someone from each
of the households, as that would be much friendlier
than a group of five people coming in at once, Tito
replied:
People in this community are hard and they do not
want to be advised. It is when things are too hard
for them that they become humble. So we decided
to go in groups to make it hard for them to attack
us as they did when people tried to go as
individuals.
The VHTs began working as groups because they did
not get a friendly reception. The adaptation meant they
had to walk longer distances as a group, to cover all the
homesteads, rather than each walking only to the homesteads
allocated to him/her. This later played a role in
their loss of morale for their work.