ABSTRACT
When introducing the living conditions of households who are as much in need of work as of improved housing in a document he wrote (UNCHS and ILO, 1995: 17-18), Tipple referred to
the horrors which face many millions of people every morning when they wake from a mosquito-disturbed sleep. Their night may have been spent on a mat in a room with four, six, or up to ten others, with inadequate ventilation,1 and an earth floor which allows the damp to rise. Their morning ablutions will comprise either a wash from tepid and cloudy water in a tin or a queue to use the only bathroom in a tenement house shared by 50 or 100 people. The toilet queue is too long, so a visit to the rubbish dump to defecate in the morning mist, or to the Augean public latrine where privacy is marginally better, is in order. The working clothes are rescued from their place over a string extended above the bed and the man sets off on the routine of queuing for crowded transport to his place of employment many miles away, often without breaking his fast.
