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In Reply to: Latrine practices posed health risks to sect posted by Peabody on November 15, 2006 at 15:50:22:
Brings back memories of those big homes where there were no end of problems.
Time and time again we had problems with overflowing sewage somewhere on the property. There were countless times we had epidemics of diarrhea and dysentry because of it. We were always too many people for the size of the installations.
I do have one funny memory. We had a ranch in southern Brazil where we were set up a school home combo. The sceptic tank installation was woefully inadequate for the number of people we were, so the solution was to dig a bigger and better pit distanced well enough away from the main house. There was an Argentian 'brother' there who was a builder, Miguel, and he had built with the help of the teens a small two room school house. I don't think I ever knew anyone who worked as quietly and sacrificially as he did. He put in long days. The leaders used him as a slave, of course he wasn't very high on the totem pole because of his 'Martha' nature, remember that one? He was human too, and he disagree and commit the worst sin of all, he'd complain sometimes, that is he'd murmur. But he did like what he did and he did it well. I remember him and his wife as friends. I was a teacher there and I remember teaching his 11 yr old daughter to read and write in English.
Anyway, he had the know how, and he, with the help of the teens and some of the other adult men, dug a new pit, dug and put in the pipes, then he built a brick lined septic pit/tank, they made a roof and put earth over it and it worked. He made sure it was a lower level than everything else, etc. Until....
Our leader there decided we needed a cow. Then he decided we needed a housecleaner and garderner so he hired a middle-aged couple. One of the man's jobs was to look after the cow. But he had his problems too, he liked the 'Cana', rum, so he didn't get some of the instructions the leader gave him clearly about the cow care.
Cows like to graze and he inevitably wandered over to the area where the septic pit was.
I'll never forget that emergency. The cow trapped in the middle of the waste, the septic pit in ruins, while we struggled to pull the poor beast free before he drowned. But we got him out, the newly hired hand got fired, and Miguel had more work to do again on the septic pit.
For me the saddest thing about this story was what happened to Miguel, the Argentian handyman. When the TS purge came in 91', that is the time when a lot of people were booted out of the Family, and exiled to TS status, Miguel became one of them. He was kicked out with one of his young sons, who was also considered to be a trouble maker. He was separated from his wife and the other children because she was allowed to remain a DO member. And according to Berg and Zerby's rules DOs were not supposed to have contact with TSers. Soon after that we moved to E Europe and I never found out what happened to Miguel and if he ever got back together again with his wife and family.
