New idea of WC without water flush

That is a long time that I'm discussing with different persons the idea of a WC without use of water flush, already developed in some “advanced” countries like whom in North Europe, and now I received a nice article related that I want to share with you.

The issue of water is really big if we consider that a part of the word -the biggest part- is leaving with no access, or limited access, to water..and not just drinkable water but water in general!!

Here, in Africa, the issue is even bigger, because many areas depend from the rainy season to have water for agriculture and also to wash, drink, etc etc....and to fill-in the under-land water canals.

Thanks to climate change, rainy seasons are always smaller and we can say that it is an African plague.

So I think that the idea of reducing the use of water is an important point to develop in Africa and every where, because :

1- the water is a limited resource -not renewable-

2- the bigger users of water is the Occident – and the biggest part of this water is used in an incorrect way and not recycled-

3- the “butterfly effect” links all the parts of the world, it means that if we finish the water in Europe that will affect Asia, Africa, etc etc and vs.

In the reality it has already started with an unknown process of African's water resource privatization, leaded by private non-African companies.

So what is it this idea of new WC?

The idea is based on the environmental principle of recycling everything that it is possible to recycle...it means almost everything!!!! Also human feces -sheet and pee:)-.

How can we do?

Using an alternative WC that looks totally the same of the “normal” one - you will sit comfortable and take a rest- but instead of being linked with the normal sewage, it will be linked with a “reservoir” - big hall...or composter-, and will be “washed” with a mix of soil, cinder, etc., to start a composting process.

The result is that, after one year, you can download the hall and use the compost to fertilize and growing plants.

Of course you can have different standard of this new WC, it depends from how much you can and want to spend. You can have one that mix and throw soil automatically inside -as a normal water flush- but also you can build a simple latrine, that will be filled up with all this mix of soil and feces and, after one year, the external structure will be removed and in the compost you will be able to plant -directly- fruit trees, etc.

I know, I know that the idea is disgusting...the idea of water that we have is that “just” water can wash and pushing away bad smells and dirtiness...but it is not true!

This is a no-smelling process, because the soil,

and the cinder -sometimes also leaves- make a mix that transform the feces in organic compost...it is the same of making a normal compost with organic kitchen waste.

It is a big answer to water problem of developing countries.

For example here in the school where I leave – it is a College to train teacher for rural areas- they built normal toilets - maybe with the hope of having normal water distribution or maybe just to waste a lot of money ?!- and the problem is that you have not water in the water flush but instead you have to put water with a bucket.

The idea of the normal WC is that about 20 Lt of water arrive on the feces with a big pressure and impact...and I can tell you that to make the same thing with the water from a bucket you have to work a lot!!! Considering also that the wheel is far from the house and you waste a lot of energy to collect it, you can understand that to go to toilet is not an easy issue!

The possibility of using a ecologic-WC will be the best solution of this water-energy-wasting process.

But there are other reasons: first of hall the hygiene.

In general, at least in the north of Angola, the villages have not latrine or toilets, not only the houses but in general...there are not toilets...meaning everyone goes to the “bush” - the “savanna”...open space- and defecate...instead to pee, for the men, every place is good...included near door's houses.

So the idea of building latrine, and use them, is really important to reduce the impact and spread of epidemic diseases as cholera, typhus, etc...that here, on malnourished person, can cause death.

The second point is that if is already long and difficult the process to convince village administrator, local administrator - “soba”-, people to help to build and use it...the best is to optimize the process and create a ecologic-latrine to create compost.

Let's now enjoy the article... :)

DEVELOPMENT: FAREWELL TO "FLUSH AND FORGET"
Analysis by Lester R. Brown*

WASHINGTON (IPS) - In urban settings, the one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is becoming an outmoded practice,made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages.
Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water -- both surface and underground -- unsafe for drinking. And their toxic wastes are destroying marine ecosystems, including local fisheries.
The time has come to manage waste without discharging it into the local environment, allowing water to be recycled indefinitely and reducing both urban and industrial demand dramatically.
The current engineering concept for dealing with human waste is to use vast quantities of water to wash it away, preferably into a sewer system where it will be treated before being discharged into the local river. The "flush and forget" system is expensive, water-intensive, it disrupts the nutrient cycle, and it is a major source of disease in developing countries.

As water scarcity spreads, the viability of water-based sewage systems will diminish. Water-based sewage systems take nutrients originating in the soil and typically dump them into rivers, lakes, or the sea.
Not only are the nutrients lost from agriculture, but the nutrient overload has led to the death of many rivers and to the formation of some 200 dead zones in ocean coastal regions. Sewer systems that dump untreated sewage into rivers and streams are a major source of disease and death.

Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment in India argues convincingly that a water-based disposal system with sewage treatment facilities is neither environmentally nor economically viable for India. She notes that an Indian family of five, producing 250 litres of excrement in a year and using a water flush toilet, requires 150,000 litres of water to wash away its wastes.

As currently designed, India's sewer system is actually a
pathogen-dispersal system. It takes a small quantity of contaminated material and uses it to make vast quantities of water unfit for human use, often simply discharging it into nearby rivers or streams.

Narain says both "our rivers and our children are dying." India's government, like that of many other developing countries, is hopelessly chasing the goal of universal water-based sewage systems and sewage treatment facilities -- unable to close the huge gap between services needed and provided, but unwilling to admit that it is not an economically viable option. Narain concludes that the "flush and forget" approach is not working.

This dispersal of pathogens is a huge public health challenge.
Worldwide, poor sanitation and personal hygiene claim 2.7 million lives per year, second only to the 5.9 million claimed by hunger and malnutrition.

Fortunately, there is a low-cost alternative: the composting toilet.
This is a simple, waterless, odorless toilet linked to a small compost facility. Table waste can also be incorporated into the composter. The dry composting converts human fecal material into a soil-like humus, which is essentially odorless and is scarcely 10 percent of the original volume.

These compost facilities need to be emptied every year or so, depending on design and size. Vendors periodically collect the humus and can market it as a soil supplement, thus ensuring that the nutrients and organic matter return to the soil, reducing the need for fertilizer.

This technology reduces residential water use, thus cutting water bills and lowering the energy needed to pump and purify water. As a bonus, it also reduces garbage flow if table waste is incorporated, eliminates the sewage water disposal problem, and restores the nutrient cycle.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now lists several brands of dry toilets approved for use. Pioneered in Sweden, these toilet (END)

Going around between Sumba and Quelo...

Some days ago I had to visit the schools in other villages really far from the center, in an area called “mato” meaning “rural area” or -better- “simply nothing”. The phone stop to work just out of the town and the asphalt stop as well, so you start to drive on a soil-street where the rainy season dig enormous halls and makes waves...it means that you start a rally.

Really nice if you have a pick-up...quite difficult if you are in bicycle or motorcycle...hopefully i had it!

The north of Angola -where I'm- is full of different landscapes.

I had 8 hours of wonderful going around, passing through forests of trees and palms, vegetation unknown -for me of course-, the Congo river -that someone still call Zaire-, and the plane, completely empty “savanna”...where you can find just grass, some small trees and these incredible “land-mushrooms” that came out from the ground.

I didn't know what they were...i had to ask, and the driver kindly stopped to show one of them.

They are the house of salasè -as they call the termites-, he just remove one of them to show the small insects at the bottom and after he putted it back.

The insects build an house that seems a mushroom, with the cylindrical base and a roof like mushroom's hat.

In reality, after the first floor they continue to build “mushroom on mushroom” and at the end the house is very big and looks just a nice-big-soil-small mountain.

The strange thing is that the land is full of these houses....you can see them regularly distanced everywhere.

The villages are far one from the other, in same areas there are no “povo” - population in Portuguese but I think that the correct meaning is more linked with “tribe”- because the soil is not good for cultivation or just because the war pushed them in more difficult part to achieve for the militias-soldiers.

The school are sometimes from the 70's, still from the Colonial period, but sometimes are just local Chapels or a tent of palms leaves, no walls and just some chairs...in the reality, many times, if the students are a lot they have to bring a chair from home -and you can see these small babies carrying a small plastic chair, always colored in pink or blue :)-.

The villages are poor but really clean, the community has a soba -local administrator elected from the population- that has to take care of the community.

I saw few villages in bad condition and dirty, with rubbish everywhere but,of course, there are no facilities. Really often the access to water is not easy-if there is no wheel they have to go to the nearest river- and there is no electricity -some has street lamps and a community generator....but really few-.

Going around like this I found also an old village, where the house are from the Portuguese domination, that the driver said was the village of a tribe that has to move during the war because too well situated on the principal roads and so often object of violent act. Near the houses there is still a military-van, with a a gun on it and everything is invaded by vegetation. When we passed through it Veronica -my colleague- started to talk about the war.

I saw that it is easy that someone start to tell story about the civil war...there is a big scare in the Angolan society related to it.

Criminal and violent acts were so strong and the end is so closed that the people are still really linked with the past war. If we think that until 2002 the country was in war, we can see that many generation -also the newest- are linked with its memory.

As in many civil-ethnic war the acts of violence were often directed against unarmed and innocent tribes-community in a so nasty and cruel way that the memory has still a long life, and -i think-doesn't matter if the “development” is arrived and run fast...someone is still too linked with the past also if the process of national reconciliation,and the will of going on, are acting in a good way.

Even with these considerations, the travel continued through nice places to see and visiting small school where these wonderful children look at me as an incredible attraction – I discover that for every one here I'm “really white”- and the teachers are often not in the work place -he went to buy bread...she is sick..he is in the town...- until to end with a really nice surprise.

In fact we were transporting some persons, that had to arrive the city and where highjacking -common in Africa-, they were carrying fresh fish and other things to the local street market...and when we dropped them, they offer a fish and a sugar-can to thanks!!! :)

Le cose che sto imparando...

To be Woman in Angola

The role of the woman in the Angolan society is really a big issue for me. As many friends told me it seems that from when I'm here, I'm more “feminist”.

It is not that before I was not taking care of the female-role in the communitarian context but here it is different!

In Europe I know my rights and that i have to be respected, and it is strange and rare that someone acts differently. Of course it depends also from the context -there is a difference between an university and a rural context- but, anyway, I have some expectations...high, i could say, also if I'm conscious that many times is just a formal -and not a real- way to treat women the one that our - “occidental”-society uses.

Anyway here is something completely different...there are not real women rights, or at least are not really respected...for example you can not register the born of a new child if you are not a men -the dad-...so, as I'll explain after, many child are not registered because the father often disappears.

The Angolan community is concerned by a fast developing process, thank to the oil and diamonds resources, but this process, as i have already said, doesn't include all the society and, most important, the women.

It is hard to change a strictly sexism mentality, where the woman has the role of mother, field worker and -most important- sexual object.

The sexual activity starts early and the absence of knowledge, and tools (condoms and other contraceptives), leads to a big number of young pregnant girls.

Many time the result is that the men doesn't assume the responsibility of the paternity, because it is not a real relationship but more a one shot game or just because this is the way of think, and many girls start to have child early, stopping their education process -if they are doing one-, starting to have a big responsibility -food and drugs cost a lot in Angola- without the husband help.

That's why, linked to economical problem and diseases, Angola has one of the biggest tax of infantile death -it is in first position following some statistic-... often the mother is not able to pay for basic drugs -as malaria drug and detecting test- and food.

The woman is, also, the one most affected by the civil war.

During it many men had still the possibility to move and study -also if many of them had first to escape from the militia that where collecting people to combat- while the women could not. That's why, now that I'm doing a family register, many women up to 30 have not any school formation (the illiterate tax is 70%, 59 % affect women).

After that it is also true that many men died during the war -there are 4-5 women for 1 man above 30/40-, and from the ones that came back many are just “survivors” with problem linked to the war experience -alcoholic, drug addicted,...-. In Angola one generation is “disappeared” thanks to the war, and the woman is one more time alone!

So the woman is often the chief of the house, with many children to feed and growth. The work in the “lavra” -field- is the first activity, and sometimes a small business linked to the sell of field products or small things (as coca-colas, small cakes, etc).

With that they have to menage a family with at least 4-5 children...hard to do, isn't?

lso in the developing process the women has not a real role, because the first local partner-mediator of foreign investors is always an Angolan male, so they can not take an advantage from it.

The existence of polygamy affects a lot the society, a man with many “wifes” makes women in competition between themselves and unable to be sure of the man help in the family menage.

The clear sexist behavior is, for me, the worst aspect. To be constantly approached as a possible sexual partner is hard for me, as for the local women. You are a “possible partner” for the simple worker up to the teachers, etc. And if I'm in the lucky position in which I can refuse myself for others is not so easy.

It is hard to understand and try to work on the male mentality but it is also hard to talk and discuss about that with the women that i daily met. They work, feed the family, cook...and many times, when they have an husband, he spends his times drinking, wasting money, that she earn, and using domestic violence...how can you help these women? I put in discussion all my mentality and knowledge, trying to find an useful approach.

Discussing also with other foreign workers here, always in the “development field”, I learned that any example of woman emancipation could be useful for them. From learn to say “no” to a sexual approach until “no” to your colleagues, that ask you,always, to cook and dish wash for them, also if you are in the same work position.

I think, and I hope not just me, that the society development pass through the woman development...and the Angolan woman is just starting to move out of a difficult situation.

esame di fine semestre e Rosa "professora"...

La malaria e Rosa Chiara