What is your intern project?
Being the first intern in our office in Haiti has given me the chance to help establish AIDG´s presence in Haiti. So far, I have worked on the construction of public toilets in Shada, and a biodigester at Doug´s village. Building capacity with our local staff, translating, and driving are other duties I have been performing.
Describe what your normal day as an AIDG intern in like.
It is challenging to describe a normal day here. The most common characteristics between construction site, office work, and search for materials consist of lots of joy, smiles, and building up friendships.
What are the main challenges you face?
Once I arrived, the biggest challenge was the language barrier since I could not speak Haitian Creole yet. Since I have overcome that, I would say that finding supplies for our projects is the biggest challenge we face in Cap-Haitien.
What has been the most rewarding moment for you?
There has been many special moments for me in Haiti, because of the Haitians I work with and have met so far. The first moment that came to mind was when some children in Shada gave me one of their few toys (a couple of colorful stickers) as a thank you gift. Besides thanking me for the morning gymnastics with them (before construction started off course), they were very thankful for having a toilet next to their homes. Generous and sharing acts makes me believe in humanity even more.
Who have you met who has inspired you the most and why?
Many people are inspirational to me here. Merci-Lourde is one of them. She is a restavec girl who has so much strength and determination. She is very sweet, hard-worker, and helps everyone. Sasha is another one person. She inspires me because of her courage, interest in politics, and belief in change.
Why did you choose AIDG? What inspired you about the organization?
I had heard great things about AIDG from Chase Nelson, a personal friend from college and AIDG-Guatemala intern. Once I understood the unique business incubation idea and about the local empowerment that AIDG promotes, I made a decision to contribute to AIDG efforts.
At the end of March, we and our community partner, SOIL, finished 2 urine-diverting dry toilets (a.k.a. ecosan toilets) in Shada, Cap-Haitien.
Here is part 2 of the pictorial how-to. You can find Part 1 here.
Building the stairs.
Molds for the toilet holes and pouring the concrete floor. Four plastic buckets are used to form the mold for where the toilet holes will be located for the 2 chambers. The concrete is poured and allowed to cure.
Lids for unused toilet holes.
Building the toilet house out of concrete block.
Finishing touches. The roof and door are added as well as a few accents. The chambers are sealed.
Urine Diverting Toilet and Urinal
Unfinished interior with urinal and 2 toilets (1 for adults, 1 for children). The simple urinal was constructed from cement with a wooden mold.
Urine collection drum and air vent. Hoses drain urine into the urine collection drum.
Pa jete fatra andedan twalet la!!! Don’t throw trash in the toilet. Latrine design allows for natural light and ventilation.
At the end of March, we and our community partner, SOIL, finished 2 urine-diverting dry toilets (a.k.a. ecosan toilets) in Shada, Cap-Haitien. The latrines are equipped two chambers where waste is converted into fertilizer, a urinal, 2 toilet bowls (one for adults and a shorter one for children) that separates urine and feces, and a pipe that diverts urine to a separate container. For the chambers, one side is used while waste in the other dries and decomposes.
Urine diverting dry toilets offer a safe and sanitary way to deal with fecal material, can be permanently sited as opposed to pit latrines, and don’t require water. The dry conditions kill most pathogens and parasites, including roundworm eggs. These above ground systems, which provide easy access for emptying, are best in places where people will use treated human waste as fertilizer and/or where the ground water is high/there is risk of flooding. Urine collected in a separate container (e.g. plastic jug, etc.) can be mixed with water and used as fertilizer. The latrines we built together will serve 200 people each.
The bad:
Safe use requires training as they work differently from pit latrines, overhang toilets, etc. Specifically, dry litter (e.g. dirt, ash, grass, leaves, sawdust) must be added after each use to prevent unpleasant odors and accelerate decomposition.
Human waste, which its potential store of cysts, worms, harmful protozoa, etc. takes a year of composting before it is safe for use on crops. While humanure is a great source of soil nutrients, many are not particularly keen on using it (or urine) as fertilizer. There are also cultural prejudices in handling latrine waste that must be dealt with. This leaves the inconvenient problem of what to do with the waste once both chambers are full.
We’re working with SOIL on setting up a municipal compost site. They have identified agro-businesses that are interested in the fertilizer if it proves to be without harmful pathogens after the year-long composting/decomposition period. Surveys of families with latrines have indicated that there is demand for an emptying service. One of the businesses that we intend to create will be involved in the emptying of wet latrines for biogas production and dry latrines for compost.
Dry composting latrine are a safe sanitation solution for locations where flooding occurs or where the water table is high. However, in cultures where individuals do not wish to use humanure or urine as fertilizer, alternative solutions for final disposal/use of waste must be sought.
Pictorial How-to (Part 1)
What follows is a rudimentary step by step guide to the construction process. Photos are from the 2 builds.
Materials:
Cement
Sand
Gravel
Concrete Block
PVC Tube
PVC Elbow
PVC Glue
Male Adapters
Rebar
Lock
Hinges
Wood
Toilet Seat
Toilet Bowl
Spigot
20 Gallon Drum
String
Nails
Wire/Wire mesh
Lamina (Metal & Plastic)
Spray Paint
Oil paint
Paintbrushes
Vinegar
The Foundation
Outlining the base of the toilet.
Prepping the site. The trench for the foundation is dug.
Foundation is built in a footing of poured concrete. Because Shada is prone to flooding and has a high water table, the foundation will ensure that feces will not leak into the groundwater.
The form is filled with a layer of sand, then gravel …
… then reinforced with wire mesh…
… after which a layer of concrete in poured, smoothed and allowed to cure.
The two chambers
Once the foundation has dried enough, the two chambers of the latrine can be built. Spaces between the two chambers are left for the vent pipe and pipes for urine diversion from the urinal and toilets.
Constructing the floor slab
Wood is used to construct the formwork that covers the chambers. Bamboo stalks are used to support the wood underneath.
Wire mesh and rebar are placed to reinforce the floor. Note spaces are left to accommodate where the toilet holes will be.
We’re always really excited when we get the chance to collaborate/partner with other great non-profits in the field. By working together we get to amplify the good work that each is doing. One such organization is Projet Pierre Toussaint, who we are hoping to install a biodigester for at their Residential Village. Fuel is one of their major expenditures and we can help them cut costs by converting dung/manure from their many rabbits and 1 cow to biogas.
Projet Pierre Toussaint is a Catholic non-profit based in Cap-Haitien that works with street kids, specifically boys (see note at bottom for why not also girls). For most of these children, they’re parents are dead or are otherwise unable to care for them.
[The primary mission of the organization] is to foster the spiritual, physical, emotional and educational growth of Haitian street children. The intent is to provide basic instruction in reading and mathematics coupled with technical training and marketable skills in a safe nurturing environment.
We hope to hire some of the boys in their technical training program over time.
PPT has an intake center/day program in Cap, where kids can come in the morning, have a warm meal, a shower and basic education. Kids that do well either by studying hard, attending classes regularly or displaying good behavior can “earn” their way into the Residential Village Program.
Some of the boys currently living at the Village.
Benik, future agronomist. He just started coming to the village about 2 weeks ago.
In the village there currently are three residences for children as well as offices, school rooms, a cafeteria (with kitchen), new vocational workroom, sewing room/depot area, facilities for soccer and basketball, and a beautiful new chapel. The boys who live on “the land” at the Village eat three meals a day, play sports regularly and are responsible for daily chores. They also have the opportunity to earn spending money through weekend work projects. These children attend school in Cap Haitian with other students their age and use the school rooms in the Village for doing homework, studying and tutoring with Haitian teachers. In addition to the above, each of the boys is given the option to learn carpentry, metal work, mechanics, sewing, gardening or a number of other trades.
Brittany McLane and Jean-Louis
The Kitchen. The kitchen is prettier than this in person without the dramatic lighting. They’re typically cooking for about 70 people a day off a propane gas stove.
***Little girls in this situation often become restavecs in Haiti. A restavec, from the French meaning “stay with”, is a girl whose parents are unable to care for her who is taken in by strangers or relatives in exchange for domestic work. Their situation can range from well-loved family member to indentured servant to outright slave. Because of the difficulty in getting access to restavecs to help them, the NGO is currently only working with boys.
The Potential (key word being potential) Site for the Municipal Biogas plant
The mayor’s office in Cap-Haitien has offered us 60 acres of government land to be dedicated for the waste-to-energy project. A separate environmental minister, however, is also interested in turning the site into a much-needed landfill. We’ll keep you posted.
AIDG/SOIL/AFAPA dry composting latrine in Petite Anse neighborhood of Cap Haitien, Haiti
Last week, I got a chance to check out the composting dry toilet we installed in Petite Anse, a neighborhood of Cap-Haitien, with our community partners, SOIL/SOL and AFAPA (Association Femme Actives en Petite-Anse).
The latrines are located at the rear of the bustling market where they serve 300 people. They are pay-per-use toilets and cost 5 gourdes (about 14 cents) a go. The pricing is a bit steep, particularly as the Shada toilets cost only 1-2 Gourdes. However, the women’s community group involved with the project picked the price point. From our discussions with SOIL and efforts to get AFAPA to lower the cost, the pricing seems to be based on the fact that they DON’T WANT people use them “too much”. The community group is concerned that they will fill up too quickly.
Hunh? you say. Well this turns out to be a very rationale concern. Within Cap-Haitien, there are many public toilets that are now full and therefore unusable. When they were first installed, they were great. However, money for continual upkeep/emptying wasn’t available and now they’re not really helping anybody. Given this previous experience, folks are treating our new toilets as a scarce resource and rationing them despite our assurances that things will be different this time.
I think for a good while, it will be hard for the community to believe that we’re solving the emptying and maintenance problem.
A great start, but ultimately just a drop in the bucket
A little more on Petite-Anse
Petite-Anse is much lower density than nearby Shada. It’s laid out roughly in a grid with wider streets, “although this is likely to change as [population] density increases” [Ref]. Gerthy Lahens, a Haitian community organizer who works with Amy Smith and who we first came to Haiti with, comes from Petite-Anse.
Last Tuesday (2/12/08), we visited Shada, a riverbank shantytown in Cap-Haitien, and met with Madame Bwa. She greeted us all warmly with a hug when arrived in our pickup truck. We had to leave the truck out on the crowded bustling road. The streets are in no way wide enough to drive in. In a few passageways, Pete needed to turn sideway to accommodate his shoulders.
Madame Bwa, our community liaison, is the type of woman who would be on the League of Women Voters if she were here. The type who sees a problem in her community and tries to do what she can to address it. She runs a tiny program out of her house to teach some of the local children hygiene and basic health skills. I believe she is also a mid-wife, but I have to verify that one later.
Between 10,000 and 20,000 people live along Shada’s labyrinthine streets. The homes are made of cinder block and corrugated iron, some with or without doors. The shore is a combined dumping area/pig trough/children’s toilet. As we tread carefully, many of the little ones cavort around us barefoot, somehow avoiding glass and feces.
Overhang toilets on stilts dot the shoreline adding to the pollution to the river delta. We will be working there with SOIL and the community to replace some of these toilets. The people we’ve talked to in the community are anxious for change. On Pete’s last visit, a resident admonished him “Are you going to help us or are you just going to study like all the other blancs?” [Blanc = white person, foreigner] While we are grateful for the deliberate and well-planned out studies performed by/with some of the larger non-profits working in Haiti, folks who are living in the situation are interested in a lot more action and a lot less deliberation. Fair enough. We will do our best.
A few portraits.
I didn’t catch everyone’s names as the kids were jockeying for position to have their photo taken. Cuties.
Cheriline
This beautiful little one [her mama had me take her picture] later went to the bathroom unabashedly in front of us all, amidst the piles of garbage.
The dumping area in Shada
The Haitian pig, sturdy and resilient. It can live in situations where American pigs would shrivel up and die. [Check out this 1993 article from the New Scientist about the U.S. eradication program of the Haitian pig in the 1980’s.]
Overhang Toilets
The community is going to organize a meeting between us and the owner(s) of the overhang pay toilets to coordinate their destruction and replacement with newer latrines. People who use the overhang toilets typically have to pay 1-2 Goudes. Though ramshackle, they offer people, particularly women, a modicum of privacy when they want to relieve themselves. In the above photo, a pig rustles through trash and feces underneath the toilet.
I had a tough time writing this post. I wrote a lot, then cut out a lot, repeat ad nauseum. What I don’t want folks to leave with is a feeling of hopelessness. Don’t be mistaken; life is hard for the residents of Shada. It’s true that people need help, but they aren’t helpless. They are dignified in a situation that strives to rob them of that dignity. They are waiting for change.
I’ve been promising to post photos/videos from the road but have been seriously derelict. However, because it’s Friday and my brain is rather fried, a work update will have to wait for the weekend or Monday. Instead here are a few non-work pics to get a sense what off-hours are like here in Cap.
Pete
Me (yeah yeah yeah this is really touristy, but in 20 years time, I figured I’d want this picture.)
Sarah Brownell of SOIL, who worked with us as Haiti program manager for a few months, is one of the reasons we got moving on the ground so quickly in Haiti.
Two cheeky children, Pete and Sasha Kramer of SOIL, one of the most skillful networkers I’ve ever met aside form Sweet Joy Hachuela.
Our water tank needs to be filled once every 2 weeks or so. Last time, it had to be filled by bucket! This time, the water truck came by for a delivery.
The school/church (not sure) behind our house. We often hear the kids singing and/or doing lessons in the morning.
Our rooftop woodworking space. I love the colored lamina. In the pic, Sunny, Pete, Isnido, Elizabeth, and Roudelin.
The Main Square a few blocks away from the office/home
Hostellerie Roi Christophe, Ritzy hotel down the street where we can have a swim and electricity/satellite internet when the electricity is down.
Part of SOIL’s lovely rooftop garden, fed with homegrown compost. These enviro-heroes have built a fab urine-diverting composting toilet for themselves on the 2nd floor.
Village-Scale renewable energy in Guatemala. AIDG & XelaTeco provided over 150 families (700+ people) in rural Guatemala with renewable electricity. A micro-hydroelectric system installed for the Chantel and La Fe communities saved them $2000/month in fuel costs during their coffee harvest. Our total installed capacity as of December 2007 is 91 kW.
Helping families breathe easier with cleaner burning stoves. We installed and upgraded 20 biodigesters and improved stoves for rural families in Guatemala. Our higher efficiency stoves cut indoor air pollution, a major ‘killer in the kitchen’.
AIDG Stoves: participatory design at work. Through active community outreach and R&D, AIDG developed stove designs that use 50-60% less wood than a traditional wood fire. For families that buy their fuel wood, this could save them 14-30% of their monthly income.
Sanitation
Waste-to-energy: Home Grown Power in Cap-Haitien. We opened a new office in Cap Haitien, Haiti. In partnership with Oxfam, SOL/SOIL, and the Mayor’s offices of Cap Haitien and Milot, we are starting a project to create a municipal-scale waste-to-energy plant. When online, the plant will serve an estimated 10,000 people, improving sanitation and providing a valuable energy source.
Improving sanitation in Cap Haitien. Working with our community partners, we have already completed a dry composting latrine to serve 300 people in Petite Anse, a neighborhood of Cap Haitien. Building new public latrines and upgrading existing ones will give many more of the city’s residents access to basic bathroom facilities as well as protect groundwater from contamination.
Water
Hot showers for cold kids. As an outreach project for a childcare center in Guatemala, we installed a solar water heater to improve hygiene for the center’s 45 children, particularly during the cold winter months.
Affordable solar water heater. AIDG partnered with the University of California - Berkeley to develop a low-cost solar water heater for under $100. Commercial systems cost $400-$1000.
Water testing. We collaborated with MIT’s D-lab for water quality testing training for XelaTeco. Lack of access to safe drinking water is a major cause of death for children under five.
Haiti: Access to sanitation and clean energy in Cap-Haitien
1. Municipal Waste-to-Energy Plant. Begin building a municipal biogas plant in Cap Haitien to improve local sanitation and provide renewable energy to the city’s residents. Once online, the plant and associated waste collection services will serve an estimated 10,000 people.
2. Compost Site with SOIL. Collaborate with local partners to establish a community compost site using effluent from the biogas plant.
3. Job Creation. Create an enterprise to manage the biogas system and collect waste for processing. Revenue will be generated from biogas sales and waste collection fees.
4. Pilot Projects: Community Biogas and Upgraded Public Latrines.
Install several community and family-scale biogas systems as outreach to test and promote the technologies. One such system will be installed for a pottery collective in Lori, Haiti to generate fuel for one of their kilns.
Help improve sanitation infrastructure by upgrading existing public latrines.
Guatemala: Access to renewable energy and water for under-served communities
5. Achieving XelaTeco’s Triple Bottom Line Goals. Cement XelaTeco as a sustainable business that provides significant social, environmental and economic benefits to the communities it serves in Guatemala. XelaTeco’s primary focus is clean energy/energy conservation systems (micro-hydroelectric, biogas, higher efficiency ‘improved’ cookstoves).
6. Community-scale Renewable Energy Systems. Help XelaTeco provide micro-hydroelectric systems for three rural communities and, pending funding, help another 12-18 communities perform micro-hydro feasibility studies and system design.
7. Delivering Water to Isolated Communities. Prepare to start AIDG’s 3rd enterprise in 2009 that will focus on delivering water supplies to isolated rural communities.
8. Pilot projects: Water Supply Delivery, Small Scale Wind Power, and Solar Hot Water.
Perform hydraulic ram pump projects to deliver water to isolated communities in Guatemala.
Conduct research & development on small-scale wind power and solar hot water systems.
AIDG: Expanding and Growing our network of businesses
9. Growing our network of businesses. To achieve our goals of providing families and communities with affordable energy, sanitation and clean water, we will continue to optimize our business incubation, training and financing model so that it can be replicated and scaled.
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