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Hundreds of villagers sit silently on the hard stone floor of the courthouse in Chikako. Dozens more wait on the steps outside for a chance to slip in and witness the proceedings.

Tuesday is justice day and this case has been awaited eagerly. Two men have made rival claims to the lucrative and powerful post of village chief. Each is here to tell the court why his claim is the strongest, and more than 300 people have travelled miles from neighbouring villages to listen.

Despite the large number present, not a sound is heard as the rivals speak. There is no clock on the courthouse wall, no breaks for meals and cases run from 8.30am until sunset.

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• Arrival of elephant pump trumpets a great day

It is striking, too, that in this conservative and patriarchal society, the crowd is half male, half female. But this was not always so. Until only a few months ago, justice was a strictly male affair and women rarely travelled to the courthouse.

The reason was neither cultural nor historical. It was simply that Chikako had no lavatory. Modest Malawian women did not feel comfortable using the bush to relieve themselves with so many men around. There was another problem – the cholera that brought illness and death every rainy season.

But Abraham Kaliveni Chometra, the powerful Mazengera district chief, hopes that all of this is a thing of the past. Last summer Pump Aid, one of The Times Christmas Appeal charities, installed an Elephant Toilet – a latrine with a few simple innovations – in Chikako.

Anyone who has travelled in the developing world will have horror stories of the smelly latrines they used. Not so with the Elephant Toilet. The pin-pricked bottom half of a plastic bottle is placed at the top of a chimney on the roof of the structure. Sunlight heats the bottle, drawing air upwards to remove bad smells and flies, which get trapped inside.

A concrete slab with two “elephant ears” – one for each foot – sits across the pit, and a channel for urine diverts the flow into a compost heap, meaning that the pit lasts twice as long as other latrines.

The only thing court officials have to remember to do is refill a plastic container with water so villagers can wash their hands – another improvement on the bush and a crucial element to Pump Aid’s mission to improve public health. Seso, a plant with antiseptic properties, grows nearby to serve as soap.

Pump Aid says that having a decent water supply is not enough. When there is no clean lavatory, supplies become polluted and diarrhoeal diseases – the second-biggest cause of child mortality in Malawi – flourish.

Chief Chometra is overjoyed at the result. He decided to place the Elephant Toilet outside the courtroom so people from neighbouring villages would see it and generate demand for more. But he is pleased, too, because women now come to his courtroom.

“It is important for me that women come to the court and not just men. I want as many people here as possible to see justice done,” he says. Now his next problem is water. “I want a pump by the courthouse so we can have water for everyone who comes. My wife is fed up of everyone using the water she has collected.”

AquAid, the water cooler supplier, will give Pump Aid £2 for every £1 donated by Times readers.