The Potty Project

(Warning: after reading this you will be asked for money! Proceed with caution:) )

I admit, when I first saw World Toilet Day marked on a calendar, I thought “Now that is ridiculous… Must we have a day for everything?” At the time a toilet was something most people had two or three of in their house, often with a fluffy pink cover on the seat and matching floor mat. And, of course, scented supersoft TP to go along with it.

Then I lived in Africa, and now Bangladesh and I have since realized that World Toilet Day is about the millions and millions of people that don’t have toilets. Without going into the details of how this impacts the health of those people, their families and communities – which perhaps I should because I for one was also quite ignorant about those – let’s just say it’s not healthy. According to statistics water-borne and diarrhea-related diseases, both results of poor sanitation, are responsible for 24 per cent of all deaths in Bangladesh.

As I wrote in my recent blog post about Rangamati, I visited a community of people there who suffered from a lack of sanitation facilities, leading to open defecation in the lake that surrounds them – the lake they are currently drinking from since, in the dry season, the water levels in their wells are so low. For some reason, this community charmed me and after leaving I was overcome with a feeling of helplessness. Later realized that if I wanted to help these people I could. All I had to do was…do it. (I admit this isn’t the most effective method of selection, but emotions serve their purpose when provoking action).

So I got back to Dhaka, started researching, scheming, meeting with toilet experts, convincing, taking toilet tours… And a few weeks later I found myself back here in Rangamati with Azarhar, a representative from SPACE, the only NGO in Bangladesh implementing ecological latrines.

I was originally attracted to the idea of ecological toilets simply because of the name. In this day and age, anything ‘ecological’ sounds like a good idea. Once I learned more about the design of ‘ecosan’ latrines I was convinced they are a good idea. Ecosan latrines, or ‘dry’ latrines, separate liquid and solids, with urine being collected in an external container to be diluted with water and used as fertilizer for trees and plants after 14 days. Solids are collected in a sealed chamber during six months, then they are left to dry for six months (removing the parasites and pathogens) at which point they can be used as fertilizer as well. Each latrine has two chambers to allow for the six- month drying period.

In addition to providing for safe disposal of faeces, ecosan toilets are built above ground, which makes them resistant to flooding, which can often render pit toilets unusable as well as causing them to overflow. The removal of dried waste for fertilizer means that the latrine can be used again and again (from anywhere between 12 and 30 years) reducing the amount of land required for sanitation purposes (pit latrines are usually covered up once full, sometimes after as little as 6 months, and have to be reconstructed elsewhere). A supply of fertilizer improves food security and reduces the amount spent on chemical fertilizer. And best of all, because there is no water used for flushing (after each use, two cups of ash are added) they don’t smell! Not surprisingly, this is what many people using ecosan latrines appreciate most.

So, with a latrine design under my belt and 2008 declared as the International Year of Sanitation, all I needed to find out was whether this community I wanted to help actually wanted my help. On Sunday, Azahar, myself and two representatives from YPSA, a local NGO in Rangamati who will be helping with follow-up, met with the community to find out how they felt about my Potty Project. As we walked into the village, we found all the children at school, and so we sat with them and talked to them about how they felt about the environment of their community and what things they wanted to change. Then with the woman I had met on my first visit, we arranged to have a meeting after school ended with members of the community.

Eventually, after much discussion with the 30 men, women and children who were there, they identified the need for improved sanitation and decided to select 10 families who did not have latrines and who were willing to provide the labour to build them. They chose a selection committee, which included the village leader, two men and two women.

We returned the next day to discuss the selection and then visited each selected family to assess the need and feasibility for constructing a latrine. Unfortunately, space on such a small island was a bigger problem than anticipated and five families were deemed ineligible due to lack of suitable space on which to build a latrine. In most cases this was due to flood levels, which would submerge the latrines entirely in some cases. One other family had a space that would have been suitable, but it was too close to their Hindu place of worship and chose not to go ahead with building a latrine.

I was disappointed that it was not possible to provide more latrines in the community, but I also understood the need to be realistic about the sustainability of the intervention…

The rest of the day was spent in meetings with local government and NGOs, all of whom were very supportive of the project. The Department of Public Health Engineering suggested that we also build some latrines in the mainland slums where they would be more visible to the communities and agencies that might want to adopt this alternative technology if they were exposed to it. The Municipal Chairman was also supportive of this idea and I agreed that we would try to build at least one in a more accessible area as a way of introducing ecosan latrines to the region.

So, the Potty Project is set to go. The only thing I don’t have is money. Well, I do, but at the moment it’s all mine and, given that I am currently unemployed, my pockets aren’t as deep as I would have hoped. The budget for each latrine is approximately $200 and I am hoping to raise enough to build eight: five for the island community and three for other slum areas in mainland Rangamati.

I have to set up a Paypal account so that I can accept donations online, which I haven’t had time to do yet, but plan to within the next couple of days. In the meantime, if any of you who are interested in supporting this project could email me so I can get an idea of how much funding I can count on, that would be extremely helpful.

I will update my blog and send out more emails over the coming days with more information. In the meantime, go to the toilet and have a think…