Time to harvest from Namwela Community UDDT!!!

by Moses Wakala (posted through Xizi Ling)

It was great news at Namwela Community UDDT constructed early last year (see the post here: http://ecosankenya.blogspot.com/2011/01/namwela-community-uddt-toilet-bungoma.html) when they came together to witness the harvesting of decomposed manure from their toilet. A team of the community members and artisans who were involved in the construction were present to witness this activity.

Many of the members present had been using the toilet but they had never experienced the removal of the fertilizer. They were in fact afraid of what could be present in the chambers when the chambers were to be opened by the expert. They could not imagine using human faeces as a soil additive.

Many of them were astonished at the way the expert was confident in opening the chambers. To their surprise, there was no odour from the compost. It was decomposed and looked much less like the animal manure they were used to handle. They were the first to take the compost by the spade to use on the farm to plant maize.

Pic1. Maize planted with decomposed organic manure from UDDT

This was an encouragement to most of the people present to construct similar toilets in their homes.

The facility here was constructed by Ecosan Promotion project funded by GIZ and EU.

Pic 2. Sampling the quality of decomposed manure from the UDDT Chamber