Among her artworks was a choreographed ballet of backhoes titled "Romeo and Juliet" and her "Touch Sanitation" that involved shaking hands with all 8,500 workers in the sanitation department while saying "thank you".
Her municipal sanitation chief, for instance, was forced to step down in July after it became known that he had bypassed normal bidding processes and steered a garbage collection contract to a company that had employed him for four years.
Her fascination with sanitation work, Dr. Nagle said, is "about a love affair".
"Things on the news don't interest me, but with the war going on and me having a little one, it's scary," Ms. Rainwater said, explaining that she and her husband, a sanitation worker, were struggling to make ends meet.
Until the construction of an equal access latrine, her access to sanitation facilities has been somewhat limited.
Earlier last year, after district officials supported by UNICEF came to the village and explained the benefits of sanitation, her husband built a latrine for Ms. Gebregiorgis and their four children.
These are lessons Klementina has learned in her school's sanitation club, an organization that empowers children to be 'agents of change', promoting positive – even life-saving – health practices in their families and communities.
(Her conceptual work "Touch Sanitation," completed in 1980, involved her shaking hands with eighty-five hundred san men).
Her father worked as a sanitation worker and her mother as a janitor.
A confident smile spreads across her face as she begins her class presentation on sanitation.
