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The smell ... the flies .... the NEEDLESS LOSS OF LIFE!
It might seem strange to get evangelical about something as basic as sanitation. In Kosele our neighbours live with the facts of inadequate sanitation.
Not having having somewhere safe and hygienic to "do your daily business" causes the most appaling problems - chronic ill health, educational failure and death. All for the lack of a toilet! And that's not all - we know that in our community the lack of a latrine conveniently close to a family house has led to young women being sexually harassed and subsequent unwanted pregnancies.
Until two years ago one of the "lowlights" for our visitors was the ritual of going to the latrine. Although they looked good, (see picture above), a visit to our latrines was, for some visitors. a distressing experience. They were smelly, almost full to overflowing, (especially in the rainy season), and full of flies. We were surprised to find out that maggots were such good swimmers.
The pictures below show how we have solved the latrine problem and developed a whole new way of producing farming inputs. |
In 1925, Mahatma Gandhi remarked that “Sanitation is more important than political independence.” More than 80 years later, access to basic sanitation remains out of reach for 546 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.
"Every day, 2000 African children die from diarrhoea. These deaths are preventable by providing safe water and maintaining sanitation,"
Yunia Musaazi, WaterAid's East Africa policy advisor
30 percent of Kenya's disease burden is sanitation-related, with many children dying from diarrhoeal diseases including dysentery, cholera and typhoid, according to the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation. The U.N. says that such deaths could be prevented through investment in toilets, water and hygiene.
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| The miracle of the Ecosan toilet |
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| We were really pleased with ourselves when we built these pit latrines in Feb 2003 - (to cope with increased demand!). They were 18 feet deep originally and well built in concrete. We didn't really think it through though! We first hit water about 8 feet down. We didn't know a lot about the water table then. The washing up bottle contains handwash - water and Dettol mix. |
This delightful picture is a close up of the business end of the latrines shown in the picture on the left. You can't quite see the maggots. This part of life in Kosele was really tough for some of our visitors - (some amazing feats of holding breath and putting off the evil moment for ages). Good for the thigh muscles though. |
The Exhauster guys did an amazing job. We had to pay for them to come all the way from Kisumu, (about a 2 hour journey) to empty our latrines. The old fashioned way of referring to the "product" is night soil, (which is why the pictures are so dark). One of the least enviable jobs in the world. The latrine contents were sucked up a hose, into the tanker. |
Suction power at it's best. The driver on this team did an impressive job of not knocking anything down as he drove as close to the latrine as possible. This was neccessary because the suction hose wasn't very long. The connector to the tank on the lorry wasn't very well sealed but the job got done - eventually. |
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The book that started it all ........
The picture on the left shows the cover of one of the most inspiring books that Terry has ever read, (available as a free download - just Google the title). An unlikely best seller but just possibly the solution to the developing world's sanitation and food security problems. Best message in the book........ what goes round comes round. In the old days this was the normal way to deal with human manure. Best quote from the book .. "The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in their drinking water supplies and those who don’t. We in the western world are in the former class. We defecate into water, usually
purified drinking water. After polluting the water with our excrements, we flush the polluted water “away,” meaning we probably don’t know where it goes, nor do we care. " |
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| So .... after reading the book it became obvious that we needed to act on it. Mary Aduda, (our manager in Kosele), contacted a ladies' group working close to Lake Victoria and we went to visit their project. The ladies had been isnpired to build Ecosan latrines for a number of reasons. Terry was shocked to learn that the majority of pit latrines built in the area collapsed - sometimes with fatal consequences. It was inspiring to meet the ladies group involved in this project. They are real evangelists for good health and sanitation. |
One of the ladies demonstrated how the Ecosan toilet "plate" works. An Ecosan latrine is basically a urine diverting toilet, which seperates faeces from urine. Urine goes down the front of the plate and faeces go down a seperate hole at the rear of the toilet plate.This means that the faeces are kept dry, in a composting chamber. After finishing on the toilet ash, wood shavings or dry earth are put down the hole to cover the faeces and they are left to compost. The compost is then used on crops as fertiliser. |
This is a picture of the business end of the Ecosan - where the faeces are stored. The ecosan latrine in these pictures is brand new so no "product" has been collected yet. The urine is collected in a plastic water tank. The stored urine is diluted in a 1:10 ratio with water and is applied straight onto crops as a fertiliser. The ladies have built a number of these new latrines in their area and are achieving good results on their shambas. No more collapsing latrines and no more horrible smells and flies. |
The proof of concept - healthy crops fertilised by the recycled products of the Ecosan latrine. All over Africa farmers struggle to afford fertilisers to maintain the health of their soil. Africa has some of the worst soil in the world. The Ecosan latrine is a brilliant innovation that could help to improve food security as well as improving public health - a real Millenium Develop Goal double whammy. Cultural taboos pose a challenge to widespread adoption of this innovation but examples of good practise should help to remove these. |
| So - with the help of some funding from our friends we built our own Ecosan latrines in August 2009 |
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| We had a great team of builders and were able to make progress quite rapidly. |
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So we ended up with our own 3 door Ecosan latrine. They were so well built, (and so unique), that they became a bit of a tourist attraction. We had visitors from as far afield as Nairobi.
The black bins on the left are used to store the faeces for further composting. With a large number of children and staff using these latrines they still fill up quite quickly. It takes 12-18 months for the faeces to be ready for use as fertiliser. Mary, (our enterprising manager), has already started using our first batch on her own land. She's leading by example. We can't wait to see how she gets on. |
Collapsed latrine - Shortly after finishing our first block of Ecosan latrines torrential rain washed away the foundations of one of our older pit latrines.
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Future plans
Thanks to our friends from Cisco we have been able to build another block of Ecosan latrines so we should be able to knock down our old pit latrines soon. (It just needs one more trip from the Exhauster team to make them safe!).
We will soon be setting up a Rural Training Programme. This will significantly increase our farming activities so the Ecosan "produce" should be put to good use. It will be an interesting experiement. Expect pictures of bumper crops in due course ..........
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