Composting Latrine Project

November 30^th , 2011 was one of the most memorable days of my service.  This one day encompassed my desire to join the Peace Corps:  professional development work and personal adventures.  In the morning my Health Committee presented to the community a Composting Latrine project that we designed together, and in the afternoon we went hunting in the jungle.

The Committee members presented the idea of Composting Latrines (usage and maintenance), how they could improve health, and the benefit to their agricultural products.  They also presented a Work Plan, which is to solicit an agency for 4 latrines to be built at the Committee member’s homes.  Rules for participation were also given, and exactly what each family will contribute to the project.

The rules are:

1.  Attend 3 Health Talks
2.  Carry materials and participate in all work days to build latrines
3.  Sufficient wood to build the enclosure for the latrine, before construction begins
4.  Have 3 sacs of dry material to be used for composting, before construction beings.
5.  Each family pays $5 to the Treasurer, which they will receive in return if they participate in all days of work.  If they miss a day of work, they will not receive their $5, and in turn have to pay $10.

Family Contribution

To show the agencies that the community really wants latrines, each family is going to put down all the wood necessary to build the latrine, as well as manual labor.  Including materials and manual labor, each latrine costs about $500.

Peace Corps as a Bridge

The project is designed to solicit Panamanian Agencies with a long-term agenda for developing Composting Latrines.  I have given PowerPoint presentations on Composting Latrines to the PASAP, the Panamanian Minsitry of Health’s Water and Sanitation wing.  After the first 4 latrines are built, the Health Committee needs to give updates on the progress of the project.  Once those updates are given, the community and the agency can then work together on a bigger project.  Thus bridging the community and the agency, and removing Peace Corps from the process entirely.

Processes and Friendships

The goal is to take the Health Committee through the process of designing, soliciting, maintaining a Pilot Project of 4 latrines.  After the community sees how the latrine works, the Health Committee initiates the same process to solicit a bigger project.  This allows for a greater impact on health because the community will see their neighbors properly using a latrine, and hopefully follow.  For a community that is consistently handed out projects, this project will be one that they themselves initiated and executed.  Finally, it gives a sense of pride and ownership that they haven’t ever felt before.  Everybody loves accomplishing a challenge.

After the meeting my close friends Atilio and Misael were elated.  We looked at each other and said – “Let’s go hunting!”  We blast out on the Chucunaque River with rifles, machetes, and dogs.  As we are riding up river, they both said to me:  “Moises, I never thought that I would be up in front of my community presenting a project…”

Sitting there on the piragua, filing my machete, I had never felt more satisfied.

Health Committee Training

During November, I trained my Health Committee on Sanitation issues.  I found 5 community members who wanted to participate on the Committee, who will relay what we learned to the community, and start a pilot project.  I’ve been living in Alto Playón for a little over a year now, and I’m finally at the point where I have reliable people to work with me.   We started a group in December 2010, but it completely failed.  Nobody would show up to meetings, and weren’t really interested in working together.  I was able to find the right people by doing a Bucket Latrine presentation and Environmental Health Workshops.

The greatest part is that my host sister, Irasema Guainora, asked to join the committee the morning that we started the training.  She is really interested in composting latrines and I’m excited to have a woman on the committee.

WASH Index

I started off by teaching them about the WASH Index, which is a way to appraise the current Water and Sanitation situation.  After using the matrix to analyze the community, it was evident to the Committee that there was a lot of work to be done.  I also hope that this self-analysis will serve to have them view their community in a different way.  It also serves as a way to track the progress of the Sanitation situation in the community.

	MUCHO TRABAJO	HAY TRABAJO	NO TRABAJO	Fecha:	Fecha:	Fecha:
LETRINAS	No hay letrinas;  La gente usan el monte o el rio	Algunos tienen letrinas.  Son mantenidas mas o menos.	Todo de la comunidad tienen letrinas.  Son mantenidas buenas.
DRENAJE	No hay sistemas de drenaje.  Mucha agua estancada con cria de mosquitos.	Algunos tienen un sistema de drenaje.  Hay varios lugares con agua estancada.	Todos tienen sistemas de drenaje.  No hay agua estancada.
RESIDUOS SOLIDOS	No hay sistema de mantener residuos solidos.  Hay mucha basura en las calles.	Un sistema de mantener residuos solidos ha empezado.  Hay poquita basura en las calles.	La sistema de mantener residuos solidos esta funcionando.  No hay basura en la calle.
LAVA MANOS	No hay Tippy-Taps.	Algunos tienen y usan Tippy-Taps con jabon.	Todos tienen y usan Tippy-Taps con jabon.

Sanitation Topics

The training was based on 4 sanitation topics:

Drainage Systems

Solid Waste

Latrines

Hand Washing

For Drainage Systems, I spoke about making soak pits, which is essentially digging a hole in the ground and filling it with sand and medium sized rocks.  Having a soak pit below the washing area can remove standing water, which is a breeding ground for mosquitoes and smells awful. Although the ground water table is high in our community, the soak pit I have is working well.

Since Alto Playón is rural, the community needs to manage their own Solid Waste.  I first educated them on Reducing their trash and then Reusing their trash via composting and/or making useful things.  With all the rest of their waste, I introduced making an Incinerator out of metal tanks.  This way people can deposit their trash there, burn it in a single, high temperature location, and then bury the ash.  Burning trash is NOT an environmentally friendly option.  However, in our situation it will keep the community clean and reduce disease transmission via mosquitoes.

We then talked about Latrines.  I first covered disease transmission and how open defecation in the jungle and in the river is harmful to health.  Everyone on the Health Committee was essentially there because they are interested in Composting Latrines, and all of the previous promotion had paid off.

Finally, we covered the importance of Hand Washing, after using the bathroom, before eating, before preparing food, and the hands of the kids.  I introduced a Tippy-Tap which is a hanging gallon of water which allows them to wash their hands.

We covered each of the 4 topics in depth and I gave them a Pre-Test and a Post-Test.  They were most interested in working on Composting Latrines and we started to develop a Work Plan and a project to present to the community.

Designing a Project that WORKS

For the last few months I’ve been doing my best to design a Composting Latrine project with my community.  I have done a lot of Health Promotion and Bucket Latrine demonstrations in the past, which has raised consciousness of the community.  It has also helped me find my current Health Committee President, Atilio Guianora, who took a 3 day Project Management & Leadership course with me.

But how do I then translate a few educated and motivated people into developing infrastructure for an entire community, and continue to grow leaders?  If I were to follow the development norm in rural Panamá, I would solicit a big latrine project for everyone.  If I wanted to be a bit more strict, I could ask people to come to meetings and only those who came to meetings would then be part of the project.  That may work, but there are too many factors to make things go wrong:  people not showing up to work days, not viewing the project as their own but as “Peace Corps Project”, and the worst is that they might not even use the latrine.

I’m more interested in initiating a Community Action Cycle.  Designing a project that can be run by community members - first along with me on a small scale, and then independently on a larger scale. 

Initiating Behavior Change

In order to improve health, you’ve got to get people to change their behavior.  Placing infrastructure in front of them won’t do it.  Behavior change needs to come from within a few, and can come from the rest following a good example.  I thought it would be best to start with only a few latrines for those who chose to sit on a Health Committee.  I would train the Health Committee on Sanitation issues and how to design a project.  They would be the example for the community not only on how to build, maintain, and use the latrine, BUT how to participate in a community wide project.  When they see their neighbor using something new, they will hopefully be more interested in having their own

Making Things Exclusive

Why does Steve Jobs only release a limited amount of iPhones at first?  Exclusivity.  Release a few, intrigue the many. I am hoping that by only a few members having a composting latrine, the rest of the community will be interested in having one as well.  

First 5

Let's take a small quiz.

What are the first 5 things you do when you wake up in the morning?

1.
2.
3
4.
5.

I wager that at least 3 out of those 5 activities require adequate sanitation and potable water.  What do you do when do you do not have access to either of these?

If you live in my village you grab your machete, take a walk out in the the jungle, and take care of business.  Since you have to bathe, brush your teeth, and get water from the river, you may defecate in the river.  It's hard to imagine, but the same way we don't think twice about turning on the tap or flushing the toilet, people in Alto Playón are accustomed to using the river for all of their water and sanitation needs.

Make Special Drink

I recently read a book called 'Made To Stick' which is based on the notion that ideas can be communicated more effectively if they follow a certain structure.  Structure in creativity?  The authors studied thousands of advertisements and campaigns to find that the most successful ones had similar underlying components them:

Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories

I'll leave you to read the book to fully develop the ideas.  I followed this framework in 2 health talks that I give in my village.  Health promotion is essentially engaging in behavior change.  How do you change behavior?  Convince people of your ideas.

I took advantage of a Panamanian Ministry of Health (MINSA) health visits that come into my town to give a talk about how to make Special Drink, or suero.  Having them present with me made what I had to say more credible because it came from Panamanian authority.  This drink is meant to be given to babies who run the risk of dehydration when they are are suffering from diarrhea and vomiting.

I kept the talk straight to the point and very simple by talking only about how to make and administer the drink.  It is made very easily by mixing 8 spoons of sugar, 1/2 spoon of salt, in 1 liter of purified water.  Parents should give this to children by the spoonful until they see signs of improvement in the condition.  It is not a substitute for going to the hospital, but can save a child's life when they are severly ill and one cannot reach the hospital.  There is no conventional transport to or from Alto Playón between 6PM to 6AM.

We presented the talk on a sheet of paper full of pictures on how to make the drink.  Then, I unexpectedly made the mix in front of them, pouring 8 spoons of sugar and 1/2 a spoon of salt into a bottle of water.   A cup of the drink was passed around to the room full of women for them to try, a concrete sample of what they should make.  Finally employed their emotions by elaborating a very common story:  it is 9PM, your child is crying uncontrollably, has diarreah or vomiting, and it is pouring rain outside.  What do you do?  MAKE SPECIAL DRINK.

For the next couple weeks I would ask the women: "How many spoons of sugar & salt?" and they were able to repeat the recipe.  One women told me that the recipe helped when her child had diarrhea, and that makes it all worth it.  We did the talk again 3 months later and the women were able to repeat the recipe and were even more responsive to the talk.

Bucket Latrines

In an effort to promote composting latrines and for my own sanitation needs, I use something called a bucket latrine.  That's right - I take a sh!t in a bucket, and then compost it.

It's a very basic system actually.  I take a sh!t in a bucket and then I throw rice hulls on top of it to start the composting process and to remove the odor.  In fact, a variety of dry materials would work in order to compost human excreta; chopped grass or saw-dust do the trick just fine.   The miracle of composting lies in the fact that when human excreta is combined with these dry materials, the combination will kill the harmful pathogens that live in your poop.  Time, a critical mass, and a critical ratio of Carbon to Nitrogen in the mix (roughly 30:1) awakens thermophilic bacteria that heat up the pile and kill pathogens.  Once these pathogens are destroyed, the compost is ready to be used in the farm or the garden.

Every time the bucket is full, I go outside and dump it into my compost bin.  I asked community members to come and help me with a project one day, but didn't tell them it was the compost bin.  After we built the bin, I showed them what I intended to do with it by dumping my bucket in front of them.  To their surprise, disgust, and awe, they themselves saw that composting human excreta in fact doesn't smell.

By the end of my service, the bin should be full.  I have hopes that the next Peace Corps Volunteer that comes to my site will show the community how to utilize the compost.

Rodolfo's Abono

After the Environmental Health Workshops and my bucket latrine demonstration, many of the community members are responsive to the idea of composting latrines.  But you never really know how convinced they actually are, because often times most people just say YES to you because they may be intimidated.  Since it would take a year to show results of my humanure composting, I thought I would introduce the idea of composting cow manure which takes about 6 months.

My host brother Rodolfo is working really hard to get a coffee farm going and I suggested to him that we should make a compost pile.  We went up river where to a cow pasture outside of the Comarcá to collect buckets of cow manure.  I brought the rice hulls that I had so it wouldn't smell too bad on the boat ride back.

The next day we walked the very heavy buckets of cow manure into the jungle and started a small compost pile.  We started by digging into the ground about 18".  The pile is made by the layering of chopped grass/leaves, cow manure, and rice hulls, over and over again.  This should be the right combination of organic material for the composting process to initiate.

We have been going back every 3 weeks to mix the pile, and hopefully we will have some compost to plant by November!  I'm excited that Rodolfo worked with me on this.  Many people in the community would see this as waste of time, but he took the initiative to try something new, and I respect that.

Ecological Sanitation

Ecological sanitation is a system whereby human excreta (humanure) is composted to be re-used as a fertilizer.  What!? THAT'S GROSS!  Reuse my sh*t?!  But the sh*t that comes out of my body is full of harmful pathogens and well, smells like sh*t!  Yes, but there is more to your sh*t than you knew about.  Alongside the harmful pathogens live millions of productive micro-organisms that, under the right conditions, will kill the harmful pathogens which spread diseases.

For pathogen destruction to occur the excreta must be heated up to 140 F, or thermophilic conditions.  Thermophilic conditions are reached by creating a pile of a combination of human excreta with organic material such as grass clippings, rice hulls, or sawdust.   It takes at least one year for these conditions to arrive, therefore compost piles need to sit untouched.  Remarkably, the organic material removes odors and repels flies and mosquitos.

Furthermore, humanure composting is part of the food cycle.

Appropriate technology.

Our community sits on a river bank and has a high water table, which means if you dig more than 2 feet you will find water.  This rules out pit latrines because the pit stays wet, gets full of maggots, smells horrible, and attracts mosquitos.  These mosquitos are vectors for disease transmission as they fly around the community after having touched human excreta.  People in my community, especially women, hate pit latrines for the smell and therefore either use the river or go out into the jungle.

A composting latrine is built above ground and thus avoids reaching the water table.  It is designed to have 2 chambers with a special seat above the chambers that allows the excreta to fall below and also separates urine.  Urine is separated in order to keep the pile at around 50% moisture content.  A wet environment doesn't allow for the pile to reach thermophilic conditions.  After each use the user throws dry material into the chamber.  Start by using one chamber for a year or until it is full, then start using the second chamber.  Leave the organic material in the first chamber to compost for at least one year.  Remove the humanure, dry it out under the sun, and then plant some banana trees!

21st Century technology?

Would you take 2 valuable resources, combine them, to then render both of them as useless?  If I gave you 3 gallons of water and fertilizer would you throw them away?  Unfortunately, our 'modern' sanitation system does exactly that.  Every time we flush the toilet, we combine human excreta and 3 gallons of water to render them both useless.  YES I am classifying human excreta not as waste but as a resource.

As volunteers in the field we come up against the cultural / custom battle of how human excreta is perceived all the time in rural communities.  However, this battle would be x100000 times harder in the Western world, which can be for the most part considered to be fecophobic.  Eastern cultures have been embracing humanure composting for centuries, as they see it as part of an ecological cycle.  In fact, in South Korea humanure has been known to be sold on the black market!

Our current sanitation system does work from a public health standpoint.  However, it is also consumes are amounts of resources and is completely dependent on the grid.  In order for your excreta to move from your house or apartment to waste management facility requires a system that uses a lot of water and a lot of electricity.  Humanure composting uses neither water or electricity.  Could humanure composting be scaled up to someday make an impact on the global warming challenges we face?

Environmental Health Workshops

Participatory Analysis such as Community Mapping, Health Calendar, and a SWOT analysis were used as information gathering tools.  Development practitioners use this information to then design educational seminars, projects, and initiatives in the community.  I used our analysis to design 3 half-day participatory Environmental Health Workshops, one of which was conducted with the Panamanian Red Cross.  The activities in the workshop came from the UN & World Health Organization's PHAST Guide for Health Promotion.

The EH Workshops had 3 goals:

• Analyze the community's current health practices.
• Connect drinking water and lack of sanitation to diarrheal diseases cited on the Health Calendar.
• Provide multiple sanitation options and analytically select the appropriate solution. 

I started with an activity called 3-Pile Sorting where members were given cards with drawings of with a range of good and bad health practices I observed in the community:  from washing hands with soap before eating to defecating in the river, from using a composting latrine to throwing garbage in the river.  In groups they have a discussion to sort the cards under Good for Health, Okay for Health, and Bad for Health. 

As they presented the Bad for Health practices cards, I showed them how those practices brought about the diarrhea and vomiting they cited on their Health Calendar.  This image of how open defecation connects to ingesting feces brought one person in the room to gag.

I then asked how the Good for Health cards could cut these disease vectors.  Latrines and hand washing came up as the solutions.

What kind of latrine is best for Alto Playón?  I asked the community list characteristics of what they want in a latrine:

• No smell
• No flies
• Proximity & Safety
• Private
• Maintenance
• Cost

We then tested their chosen characteristics against a pit latrine, a composting latrine, and a septic system. The pit lost because it smells horrible and attracts mosquitos.  The septic system is far too expensive and unfeasible for a rural community with no running water.  In every workshop the Composting Latrine won!  

The workshops were a success.  In a participatory manner the community not only took a look at their current water and sanitation practices, but also together picked the solution.  This lays the ground work for further education on composting latrines and the formation of a functioning Health Committee. 

Broken (Human) Infrastructure

Why doesn't the aqueduct in Alto Playón work?

About 3 years ago Alto Playón was donated an aqueduct which pumps river water to two 650 gallon tanks, which is pumped to the houses.  In order for the aqueduct to work, families need to pay $2 a month for gasoline and to pay a plumber to run the pump.  The system functioned for only 1 month, and the women and children continue to carry water to their houses.

A Daily Usage analysis revealed that the current system has enough capacity to meet their needs.  Everyone agrees that it would be easier to have water pumped to their house than carry it.  And all of the infrastructure is in place - a pump (although broken, can be fixed), tanks, pipes, and taps.  Ostensibly, things should be fine.

So why does the aqueduct not work?  Tough question with multiple possibilities:

• No community investment.  The community put no investment into their down development:  no time, planning, or money was put down on their part.  They were handed all of the infrastructure and worked for 1-2 days to bury pipe. 
• Mis-management.  There are households who want the aqueduct to work, I've talked to them many times.  They are hesitant to pay because other families don't pay and still take from the system.  It is the responsibility of the Water Committee to cut these families from the system, but they don't.
• Poor infrastructure.  No training was given to the community members on how to fix the pump or fix broken PVC.
• Customs.  Emberá-Wounaan women are so accustomed to carrying water from the river that they aren't bothered by not having an aqueduct.  The men are used to having water in the house, so they don't notice the difference.

When organizations want to help, infrastructure is easy to pick because you can quantify it and see it done quickly.  Also, our way of thinking doesn't register that someone wouldn't use a technological improvement.  More often than not however, donated infrastructure is seen broken and unused.

I am learning that there are multiple ways in which development has to take place.  I gave the Water Committee a lesson on thermoforming - forming PVC pipe connections with hot oil.  I'm working with the Water Committee to get more organized, be transparent, and enforce their rules.  I implore the women to think about how much easier it would be to have water pumped to their house.  In a community meeting I broke it down to them like this:  your water bill is $2.00 a month, 7 cents per day.  Is carrying five, 40 pound buckets of water everyday worth less than 7 cents?

40 Pounds of Water

What does it feel like to carry 40 pounds of water on your head for 20 minutes, 3-5 times a day, everyday? Just ask the women in Alto Playón and throughout much of the Comarca Emberá-Wounaan.  Everyone in the world has a system for water in their house.  Whether you carry it, use rainwater, have a gravity driven system, or pumps and pipes send it to your faucet.

I took a survey as qualitative and quantitative study of the water situation in the community.  I spoke with the women about how much water they use on a daily basis, and whether or not they treat their water.  Here are the results:

The Daily Water Usage results told me that the current system has enough capacity to deliver their water needs.  I also learned that most families don't like to chlorinate their water and that I could make an impact educating households on treating their water.  

Although this was an information gathering exercise, it was also to raise consciousness around water.  I presented this information to the Water Committee to motivate them to start running the aqueduct again.  We re-tooled the monthly payments, laid down new rules - such as being cut off from the system for those who don't pay.  In a town meeting the President presented this to the community and only 16 families chose to participate.  

Emberá-Wounaan Culture

The Emberá-Wounaan are known for carving coco-bolo, which is a type of wood that is used to make beautiful crafts. It is really hard to find coco-bolo close to the villages because it has all been cut down. Unfortunately I don’t have too many other pictures, but I have seen big carvings of iguanas, crocodiles, sword fish, etc. Here he is carving a masher to use in the kitchen and a cane.

Very well known throughout Panamá is the craft that the Emberá-Wounaan are known for is making canastas. These baskets are hand woven from a plant called chunga. It is dried out in the sun for the white color. The black color comes from cooking the chunga with coco-bolo. The yellow is derived from a plant, whereas the rest are from dyes. The women get together to make canastas and typically sell to tourists or vendors who come from Panamá.

The Colombians recently celebrated a quiceañera for a young girl in the village. The evening started with a traditional dance accompanied by chi bom-bom music. For the dance the women wore traditional beaded blouses and painted their bodies with jagua. The young girl was very drunk and carried by the women during the dance. After 30 minutes of dancing she was taken to her house.

Playing the shaker

Emberá-Wounaan are extremely warm and welcoming people as a whole. It doesn’t take much for an Emberá to start calling you djaba or a-che which mean ‘brother.’ The women aren’t particularly very shy either, and are quick to make friends. I was happy to have my friend Lynn come visit and be welcomed by the people in Playóna. Lynn borrowed a paruma from Lunia and was now in true Emberá style. She made friends with girls who are writing her letters and constantly asking me when she will come back.

Living in Playóna

The beginning of February marked moving into my own house.  There was a lot of back and forth in the community about building a new house or taking on an existing house and renovating it.  I pushed for moving into the existing house simply because it would mean cutting down less trees of the rainforest.  I moved into a house that was built for a teacher who is no longer working in the town.  The roof needs to be fixed and we are going to make the living room bigger. 

My djaba Bansi and I went into the jungle to cut penca leaves for the roof, which was a lot of fun, but really tough.  We walked around looking for the leaves, cutting them down with machetes, folding them up and walking a wrapped pile back to the village.  Some of the leaves are hard to reach and required Bansi to climb the trees to chop them down.  After Bansi climbed the tree, I stuck his machete on a large stick to hoist it up to him.  He cut and I organized the pile.  Walking out of the jungle with 20 penca leaves on your back is heavy. 

I also learned how to use a chainsaw.  Harder than it looks, but I'm practicing.

Can you find Bansi up in the tree?

Tieing penca leaves into a 'bulta', Emberá style

After having such a good time with my host families in December and January, I almost stayed with them for the rest of my service.  Although that would have been great, it would have detracted from my work and personal experience.  The more people I talk to and create relationships with, helps me in the Environmental Health work I’m trying to do.  Continuing to live with host families for 2 years would have isolated me from the community.  I’m always at their houses anyway - as they insist on continuing to feed me, I insist on eating.

Personally, life is simply more real in Alto Playón living alone. I cook, clean, do my dishes, and carry water from the river (I have a lot of respect for the women who carry 5 gallons of water (40 lbs.) on their head for 4 times a day everyday).  It’s unusual to not get gifted some platano, rice, or ñame from someone’s farm.  I’m on my own schedule as well.  I’m usually up at 5:30, bathe, meditate, cook breakfast, and start the day.  Having my own house makes me more of a community member and not just a guest.

There’s still a lot of work to do:  fixing the roof, building a latrine, working on the extension, rainwater catchment, and connecting to the aqueduct.  Life moves at a different pace in Playona, but it’s good to be living there.

My house during sunset.  We're opening it up

View from behind my house.  Chucunaque River in the background.