More on the Latrine Project and Water Pump Projects
April, 2002
I have finally finished the planning phase of the projects I'm working on. Since I have the details, I thought you might be interested in exactly what I'm going to do here.
The "commune" of Taabo has five villages (Ahondo, N'Denou, Taabo Village, Kotiessou, and Kokoti Kouamekro, in case you want to start practicing your African names). The villages are each around 2000 people. There is electricity in each village except N'Denou. No villages have running water, it all comes from the public pumps, many of which are broken. When the pumps are broken, you get your water from a pond or river. Women and children walk many kilometers each day collecting water when the pumps are broken.
Latrine Project
The last volunteer in Taabo put two latrines in each village. One is at the school and the other at the chief's house. Everyone else does their business out in a field. Can you imagine? I've offered to build up to 15 latrines in each village.
I have proposed a design with a latrine and bathing platform in one. (Perhaps the webmaster has posted the copy I sent her.) I'm basically copying designs other volunteers have used.
The latrine is about one meter by one meter. The bathing space is one meter by one and a half meters. Out of the back of the bathing space is a pipe that runs the used water into a drainage pit. The design has walls that overlap and wrap around for privacy, but without the cost of a door. The walls are mud brick with cement crepisage over them. They will be about 5 feet high. The latrine hole will be four meters deep, lined with cement bricks. You must put a latrine hole at least 10 meters from a water source. The bricks filter out all the bad stuff from the water that escapes back into the earth. There is no ceiling on the structure, again, to save costs.
The drainage pit will be about 1/2 meter by 3/4 meter and one meter deep. It's a great technology, but one unfamiliar to most villagers. You dig the pit, then fill it with rocks, little ones on the bottom and big ones on the top. You cover the pit with "rice sacks" that are water permeable but not earth permeable, and put a bucket (with holes in the bottom) in the center to act as the funnel. Then you train people to pour their used water - from bathing, washing, or cooking - into the pit. The rocks break up the force of the water, and the pit lets the earth absorb the water rather than having it sit in a puddle. We live in a malaria-ridden zone...puddles give mosquitoes a chance to breed. Less standing water means, hopefully, fewer mosquitoes.
Each latrine / bathing platform will cost about 100 dollars to make. I have told the villages they must supply 35%. I'll write a grant for the other part. It should be easy to find the funding to do it... latrine projects are pretty standard fare for Peace Corps volunteers. As for their 35%, I'm asking the villagers to dig their own hole, make the 300 mud bricks for the walls, buy the rebar that reinforces the latrine platform, supply one person for three days as the mason's assistant, and feed the mason lunch while he is there. I will buy the cement, the cement lining bricks, and the assorted other supplies that are necessary, and pay the mason.
The project also includes a training class on how to clean the latrines, the oral-fecal disease cycle, and hand washing. I've said everyone in the family over the age of 13 must attend.
If the project is successful (that is, if the villagers don't drive me crazy), I will repeat the project in 2003 with 15 more latrines in each village. There are two places I think the villagers will drive me crazy. First, the design doesn't have a door. They will argue for a door because they will not want other people to use their latrine. In the project outline I sent to the villages, I said they could install a door at their own expense. But they are going to plead poverty and beg me to buy doors. I am not flexible on this - latrines do not need doors to be effective! The other thing the villagers will not like is having to dig the hole themselves. The last volunteer dug the hole and paid for the latrine platform, leaving the walls and ceiling for the villagers to complete. But guess what? In several cases, the chiefs did not build their walls and ceiling. One even asked me to find funding to complete the walls on his latrine - without mentioning that building the walls was his responsibility from the last project!! I found a copy of the contract he signed on file in the Peace Corps office stating that he would build the walls. I will remind him of his responsibility. So I figure if I make the villagers dig the hole themselves, I will see who is serious about having a latrine. And if I build the walls, I will know it gets done.
I hope I've planned around as many anticipated problems as possible... Wonder what the villages will think of to frustrate me anew??
I hope to build the latrines in the 3rd quarter, after the rainy season.
Pump Repairs
This project is MUCH more expensive. Clean water is important, and to have that, we need pumps that work. Money is collected for each container of water filled at the pump, and that is in theory enough to fund small maintenance projects as well as a "rebuild" every five years. The problem is that whenever the pump account gets large, a funeral or another emergency comes up, and the pump committee is talked into giving money to the needy family. Or worse yet, the money is collected and goes directly into the pump committee members' pockets.
We're looking at around 2000 dollars to do a major rebuild on a pump. I told each village we would repair two pumps, so that's 20,000 dollars for the project - a LOT of money in a country where the average annual income is about 600 dollars.
My main goal with the project is to get the pump committees in better shape. I want them to be able to protect the money from village emergencies and other losses. I've followed the lead of the World Bank which has more success working with women than men. I've told each village they must put two women on the pump committee, and that one woman must be the treasurer. This will really throw them culturally...to give women such positions of power. But face it, women are more intimately connected with the health problems their children face when they drink dirty water.
I have also told the committees that they must open their books to me and prove weekly deposits into their savings account before I will find money to fix their pumps. I will expect to see three months of weekly deposits before I will even consider including that village in the project. I'm very serious (and hard-nosed) on this because the first volunteer in Taabo did the same project in 1999. He worked with the committees and then repaired the pumps. Here it is only three years later - the pumps and the committees are broken again, and the villages are telling me they are too poor to fix the pumps themselves. Classic Africa - don't worry about tomorrow...just wait for the Westerners to come. And it's true. Face it - we are appalled to think anyone drinks water out of a pond...and 2000 dollars isn't that much money. But I think a better long term approach is to fix the committees first, then fix the pumps. I hope I can be successful with at least two of the villages I work with.
I've put together a training plan for the committees - one day of business training and two days of training on how to do minor pump repairs (lead by the regional pump technician). Once they attend those (non-voluntary) classes, I will check their savings records. After I see three months of weekly deposits, I will have the regional technician give estimates for repairing two of their pumps, and search for funding. I will be really interested in seeing how the villages do...they say they are serious, they say they know why clean water is important, but I want to see action.
Because of the three month lag in this project (savings records), I think the repairs will take place in early 2003.
That's a pretty detailed description of what I'm up to on the pump and latrine projects. I hope I have answered your questions about what it is I do all day, plus given you some insight into the problems we face in trying to do development work.