Compost Toilets for Prolit Village in Cambodia

UPDATES

The updates below are from Chris Alford. Chris is a volunteer at MaD for Good, an NGO working in Siem Reap District of Cambodia. To get to know a little about Chris take a look at the Q&A we did with him on our blog .

June 11, 2010

The toilet is now fully operational!

Yesterday we went and dropped off a completed compost toilet, which you can see the photo of. The toilet is a very simple device, called a ‘loveable loo’ by Joseph Jenkins (writer of the Humanure Handbook), which is basically just a wooden box with a toilet seat on top and a bucket inside. When the bucket is full, it is simply sealed and then left to compost for 6 months. Because of the high levels of heat in Cambodia, composting occurs incredibly fast here: we’ve been using these toilets at our NGO HQ over the past couple of weeks and the contents composts so fast that you can actually use an entire bucket of cover materials and still not fill the toilet bucket up!

It is going to be difficult to find a supplier of sawdust who is going to be able to eventually supply the whole village with sawdust, as the only big sawmills are located miles away so the community would have to depend on us to deliver sawdust which is not a situation that we want to create. So we’re going to try the cover mixture with double the amount of rice husks instead, which we’re confident will work. Time will tell though!

We came back today to take a photo of the families with the toilet, and they told us to say a special thank you to all the people abroad who had provided the money to build it, so again: another huge thank you to you all!

We will write back in a few weeks to let you know how the families are getting on with the toilet.

June 8, 2010

Construction is finished!

As you can see from the photos below we have now finished building the compost toilet. Yesterday was a hugely productive day, with the help of two more volunteers from vMaD from Canada and a good team of Khmer people we managed to make and thatch the front wall from scratch, thatch the roof, attach the walls and make, thatch and install the front door. It was a long and tiring day but it was fantastic to see the sanitation unit looking so good at the end of it. It is not fully operational yet as we have not delivered the actual compost toilet to them, which will be ready today and brought to the community tomorrow. Also, as you can see from the photos below the banana trees that we worked on are looking beautiful now, amazing to see what just a little bit of work can do! Our next focus is finding a reliable supplier of sawdust for the community, since they do not have any carpenters in the village. We’re trying to find a carpenter or sawmill in the commune or district which we can then either get a member of the community to pick up sawdust from or we can ask them to deliver leftover sawdust to the community. Until then we are going to donate them a big bag of sawdust that we have. So hopefully tomorrow the toilet will be fully operational!

June 4, 2010
We’re nearly there!!

We’ve been making good progress since my last entry, as you can see from the photos below! We’ve now installed the shower unit and have put up the timber frame. We had a bit of a shock when we went to buy the timber: 3 of our usual suppliers had sold out and the price at another supplier was nearly triple to what we were paying for the same materials a couple of months ago. Apparently the Cambodian government has enforced a massive crackdown on logging in the country, which was only supposed to only apply to a few kinds of timber (not the ones we use), but in typical Cambodian style, it has affected them all and the price for all kinds of timber has now gone through the roof! Fortunately we made some cuts on other aspects of the sanitation unit (bricks, for example), so we’re still within our budget. It took a full days work to prepare all the timber though, which basically came to us as raw trees (standard in Cambodia).

We had a great volunteer arrive from Mexico last week, called Miguel, who’s volunteering with us on our vMaD program (www.volunteer-cambodia.org). He’s been a great help from day one and has really got stuck in and has helped to speed things along. Participation from the local community has also been good over the past few days, although we did give them their ‘last warning’ when no one showed up to the project on Tuesday. The chief quickly rectified the situation though, and we had people coming to help within a few hours.

Today we worked on finishing up the timber frame and making the door frame which has also been installed. Miguel, myself and the local community worked on finishing the walls, which are made out of bamboo and palm thatch: both renewable materials that can be easily resourced from within the community. Palm thatch walls are actually pretty fun to make, although they’re quite hard work! When we left today the community were just finishing the thatch on the back wall, so when the team returns tomorrow all they have to do is attach the walls to the timber frame, finish the front walls, make and install the door (also from bamboo and palm thatch) and then thatch the roof, all of which they’re hoping to finish tomorrow.

On Monday we will be picking up a finished compost toilet which is being put together for us by a carpenter in a nearby village. We then just have to drop off the toilet, a load of 20 litre buckets and the toilet will be fully operational!! That is, of course, unless the families have not put together the cover materials as we have asked them to….

You can view the pictures in the slideshow below:

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May 23, 2010

Hi there everyone,
We’re a a week into construction now and things are coming along slowly but surely, as they always do in Cambodia. As you can see from the photos below we’ve now finished the foundations, laid all the bricks and have levelled out the floor which is going to be cemented tomorrow. All  that remains now is to finish the palm thatch walls (we’ve already made the frames for these), put up the roof and then install the toilet and the shower unit.

We’ve had a few delays as we’ve really had to put our foot down regarding community participation in the project. People in rural communities here are so used to NGOs just coming along and giving them something for nothing, usually resulting in projects that are never sustainable. Before we started working with this community we told them that we were not like so many of the other NGOs out there and that if they wanted us to work for them then they would have to work with us. Well it appeared that during the first few days the community were testing us out to see whether we would actually stay true to this and whether they would be able to get away with receiving something for nothing (after all if you can get away with this, who wouldn’t?). So anyway, they helped us during the first day and then for the next two we received no help from the local community so we packed up our stuff and left half way through the day. The next day our executive director called a meeting with the community and told them that this was not acceptable and that we would stop working for them right now if they didn’t send people to help with the project. Sure enough, this drew the line and since then we’ve had help from lots of people each day!

Yesterday, we held our first training session for the families that are going to be responsible for the toilet. Another condition of MaD carrying out any work for a community is that anyone who receives the benefits from our work must attend training sessions in areas that are relevant to the work we have done for them. So during this training session we covered the dangers of poor sanitation (the spread of disease etc) and why they need to make sure that they use this toilet from now on. We also covered the basics of composting so that the community had a better idea of what exactly the toilet will be doing and we also explained exactly how to use the toilet properly (what to use for cover materials, how to store the buckets etc). The session was received well by all, they especially loved the fact that you could sit down on this toilet and didn’t have to squat over it (as they initially tried to do!)

Today we’ve also been working on a bit of agriculture next to the sanitation unit. The idea is that each sanitation until will have a run off area for all the waste water/grey water which can then be diverted onto a small allotment and can be put to good use for growing food crops. Next to the sanitation unit there were a bunch of banana trees growing, but the problem was that there were too many in too smaller place so they were all competing for the limited nutrients in the soil and therefore none of them were strong enough to start producing fruits. So we cleared all the dead debris and rubbish from the area, cut down around half of the tree and then chopped them all up and then fed them back to the other trees as compost (did you know that the best form of compost for a banana tree is another banana tree??). Hopefully the trees that are left will now grow exceedingly quickly due to all the added nutrients they now have and will start producing bananas within a couple of months! Once the sanitation unit is finished and they have a more or less constant supply of water they should grow even stronger.

You can view the pictures of all these updates in the slideshow below:

May 19th, 2010

Finally we’ve been able to start construction! Yesterday we came down with 200 bricks and a couple of bags of cement and started working on the foundations for the toilet. The team made the mistake of taking a few too many bricks on the Tuk Tuk and so had to get out and push it at numerous points on the road as its so bumpy and sandy! Today we only took another 100 over and will be bringing in that amount from now on. When we arrived yesterday we were very pleased to see that the community had followed through with their promise and had prepared us several huge bags of sand and big loads of palm thatch, all of which will be needed to make the sanitation unit.

Over the past few days I’ve been working on compiling a database of all of the 196 families in the village by conducting a survey/questionnaire with all of the families. It’s a bit overdue, but it’s great to finally be cracking on with it and to learn more about each family that we’re going to be working with. I can now therefore elaborate a bit more on each of the families that the people who donated to this project will be supporting:

1) The first photo is of Roun. Her and her husband, Pha, have recently had their second child and they live in that tiny little shack that can be seen behind her in the photo. Roun makes baskets which she sells and Pha is a farmer growing rice.

2) The next photo is of Hen, a widow who lives with her daughter, Gnik (also in the photo) and her husband, Ron, with their three children. Hen makes and sells mats made from water hyacinth for a living and Ron is a rice farmer.

3) The next photo is of Nup Brorn’s (the chief of Prolit) family. They are a big family, numbering 11 people (9 adults and 2 children) spread across 2 houses. They own a shop and a microfinance business and are also farmers. Their kids are currently in secondary school.

4) The final photo is of Hat Hay and Bream Sovann with their youngest son. Their whole family (4 adults and 1 child) are rice farmers.

As you can see from the above, all of the families have at least one farmer in them so no doubt the rich compost produced by the toilets will be of huge use to them.

We’ll keep you updated with construction as it unfolds, thanks once again for donating!

Chris

May 13th, 2010

Hi there everyone,

Firstly, on behalf of MaD and Prolit village I would like give a HUGE thank you to all those who donated and made this project a reality. This will be the first compost toilet in Prolit village and we, and the community, are very excited to get cracking!
We have some good news and some bad news regarding starting the project. The good news is that we had a fantastic meeting with the local community on Friday where we starting mapping out all of the logistics of the project. When MaD carries out any of its development work we integrate the target community into the project as much as we possibly in order to ensure sustainability. So on Friday we figured out exactly who would be doing what during the construction of this first toilet.

MaD is going to supply the toilet, shower unit, bricks and cement whilst the community is going to source the sand and stone. Several members of the community make palm thatch walls and thatch roofing so we will be buying these parts of the unit from them in order to support the local economy. Several of the community members were then elected to help us with the actual building and all the households responsible for the new toilet agreed to attend the first training session on composting and basic hygiene/sanitation, which is a requirement for any beneficiaries of our development work. There were over 80 people at the meeting so it was great to see such a turnout!! Here is a pic of the meeting

We were hoping to bring the materials across on Monday and then start work then. However, Cambodia once again proved to be frustratingly difficult to work in as the community told us that they had a funeral over the weekend and so wouldn’t be able to help with the project on the Monday.

We then decided that we would start on Tuesday, forgetting that there is national holiday in celebration of the King’s birthday starting on Wednesday and not finishing until the following Tuesday. Khmer people are not supposed to work during this holiday so most of our team now have these days off and the community as well will most likely be relaxing and partying and will probably not be of much use if we tried to start building then! So, now the building has been delayed until next Tuesday, when we hope to start in full force, we’ve just got to hope that nothing delays us again!!

Chris

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May 2, 2010

To everyone who donated, thank you for making this happen. Construction will start first week of May and we will have updates shortly after. Thanks again.