Monitoring and Post Evaluating UDDTs in Nyanza and Western provinces

written by Kirsikka Pynnönen
(Field work for Master Thesis research on Ecological Sanitation)

Last month UDDTs in rural schools (of Ecosan Promotion Project, EPP) were monitored and post evaluated in Nyanza and Western provinces in Kenya, by a Finnish master student Kirsikka and GIZ consultants Wycliffe and Moses. The purpose of this project is to do research on how these schools have been managing with operation and maintenance (O&;M) of ecosan toilets. Schools selected for this research are the ones managing well with O&;M. Besides monitoring and evaluating the situation on the field, the purpose is to find out what are the main reasons for the good performance in these schools. And figure out if there are some particular issues that other schools, and also projects in the future, could learn from these well managing ones. Why are they managing so well, what factors are affecting to that? As known, one of the major challenges considering ecological sanitation is to create a sustainable operation and maintenance mechanism. How to succeed with that in schools, were challenges are e.g. the high population of toilet users and small children? 

Comparison on maize field of different fertilizers (chemical fertilizer / EcoSan compost) shows good results for EcoSan! Hope and Kindness, Nyanza province.

EcoSans on the school yard, Kakichuma primary school, Western Province.

In Nyanza province altogether five schools were visited, four of them sponsored by GIZ and Ecosan promotion project: Kendu Muslim Secondary School, Kachan Primary School, Siany Mixed Secondary School and Radienia Primary School. One of the schools, Hope and Kindness, was self sponsored. All the schools were managing relatively well with their operation and maintenance. Toilets were correctly used by pupils and teachers, clean, there was no smell or flies and storing facilities were functioning. Urine and also dried and stored compost was utilized in the school farms! I was happy to see how people were dealing with ecological sanitation very positively and they consider it as a very important issue. Interviewed students were pleased to use UDDTs, as they are clean and not smelly. Idea of reusing urea and compost from the toilets as a fertilizer in the school gardens or farms was well accepted. All the pupils I talked with knew the benefits of this natural fertilizer and had accepted the reuse.

In Western province schools were already closing for the Christmas holidays, so we managed to visit only some of them. Eldoret Educational Center was a very good example of well operating and maintaining schools! But, we also got one example of the opposite performance: in Kitale Ndogo Primary school the maintenance of UDDTs seemed to be entirely neglected, and the condition of the facilities was terrible. Unfortunately the head of the school was not around, so reasons for this bad performance could not be figured out. Field observations and interviews in Western province will be continued next week, and also Kitale Ndogo Primary will be visited again.

A look inside to a well maintained UDDT, Eldoret Educational Centre, Western Province.

Dry product ready for storing, Eldoret.

Ecological sanitation has been generally accepted very well in these schools and also in the communities around. Some of the schools had built more UDDTs after the EPP, and communities around were involved – which is one important factor. The schools are spreading the ”gospel of ecosans” (as one head teacher put it) and some schools get visitors who just want to see and learn about ecological sanitation. Pupils would prefer this kind of toilets also in their home communities, and for sure are spreading the idea to their parents and relatives.

Now it’s time to work with the collected data and make some conclusions. I’ll get back to the topic later!

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Who Gives A Crap? Sanitation, Energy and Entrepreneurship in Kenya

Extract from an article in Forbes magazine (online) below on Sanergy work in Kibera slums. Full article here http://www.forbes.com/sites/elmirabayrasli/2011/05/23/who-gives-a-crap-sanitation-energy-and-entrepreneurship-in-kenya/

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David Auerbach and Ani Vallabhaneni, two of Sanergy’s young entrepreneurs, didn’t need stats to know how the absence of toilets affected the poor. The two graduating MIT-Sloan of Management school students experienced first hand the challenges of no sewage or sanitation when they lived and worked in rural China and India respectively. “Going to the bathroom isn’t a popular topic that comes up at the dinner table in the West,” Auerbach, a former policy hand at the Clinton Global Initiative (and my former colleague at Endeavor), says. “It’s flush and forget for us. That’s not the case in much of the developing world.”



Children at a Sanergy toilet in Kibera slum



Auerbach and Vallabhaneni knew what they didn’t know. What they didn’t know was that they couldn’t draft up a sanitation solution in Boston – without the insights and input of those in the developing world. Committed to launching a start-up that would truly work for the poor, the two, along with a team of MIT classmates traveled to Kenya for the answers. Kenya, with eight million without access to proper sanitation but a university filled with bright and eager minds to help solve the problem, was an ideal testing ground. In January 2010 the team, in collaboration with the University of Nairobi, conducted a user survey among Kenya’s urban poor, inquiring about their lives. “It was important to us that we found a solution that fit into their lives, not our imagination of their lives,” Auerbach says.

What they found was that Kenya’s poor were interested in having compact stalls that could fit into the tight spaces of their usually one-room homes, rather than large community outhouses. They wanted a “permanent” feel to the stalls rather than the flimsy feel of a porta-potty. As a result, Auerbach, Vallabhaneni and their Sanergy team that includes engineers, architects and designers drew up plans for a 3×5 toilet made out of thin shell cement that is locally produced for $200 per unit. Each toilet is designed for a 100 uses per day. They are units, which also collect waste in double-sealed 30L containers, rather than pits, or septic tanks “that are then drained into waterways.” It is this waste collection that is key.

More than where to go to the bathroom, how to dispose of human waste is, as Auerbach points out, a primary reason that no one touches the issue of toilets. That was Sanergy’s opportunity. Recognizing that, though “messy,” human waste can be converted through anaerobic digestion to produce fertilizer or electricity. It is also where the Sanergy team recognized that it could generate revenue.

Sanergy produces toilets that are franchised to local operators who charge around $0.06 per use. Currently the company has two toilets serving approximately 150 each day.  One is at Bridge International school (a for-profit school supported by the Omidyar Network), the other in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. These local operators keep all revenues. That, Auerbach says, is an incentive for them to clean, maintain and “market” the toilets. The operators then work with groups who collect the waste daily and bring it to facilities where it is converted to energy. “The waste from each toilet generates Sanergy revenues of $1250 per year.” The waste from 10 million creates a potential market of $178 million per year. Brown gold.

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Sanitation training in primary school in Ngong Township

Posted by Leonie Kappauf on behalf of Moses Wakala

Barclays Bank Ngong branch Kenya is funding several projects in the surrounding of Ngong through their Community Project program. Sanitation is one of the projects that the bank is supporting in some schools around Ngong Hills in Kenya. The area is located on black cotton sticky soils that are unstable and therefore rather unfavourable for traditional pit latrines. The bank has therefore opted for UDDTs in some schools in order to test whether the community is accepting this technology.The UDDTs are constructed with fibre glass squatting pans and hydro form blocks for the superstructure, which has greatly reduced the cost of the toilets. 

Sanitation training in Ngong primary school

The biggest challenge for the bank's program is the lack of a training component within the project. Moses Wakala, a Kenyan sanitation expert from Ecosanity Ltd., formerly working with GTZ, observed that the toilets in the school compound were not used and the doors were locked. He learnt that the toilets were not in use since the school did not have the necessary knowhow about the technology. Consequently, Wakala initiated a full training for proper use of UDDT toilets at the school at his own cost. 

Moses Wakala explaining UDDT usage

The training covered usage, operation and maintenance, product recycling, hygiene and information on other types of ecosan systems. The training was successful and the school UDDTs are now in use.

For his contact please check the contacts page on this blog http://ecosankenya.blogspot.com/p/network-contacts.html

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