The Project: Getting Started
My community, among other things, lacks latrines. However, as all
development projects go, it is not as simple as putting in a few poop
holes and calling it a day. First, there's the physical aspect of
digging a hole. The water table in the region is only 1'-2' down,
because the elevation is more or less at sea level. Also, heavy rains
several months of the year and the preference for the indigenous tribes
to establish communities along the rivers (not only a water source but
the method of transport as well) is common. Ergo, digging holes is only
going to create more nesting grounds for mosquitoes. This means worse
things here than the annoying red bug bites. Mosquitoes in the jungle
spread Malaria, Yellow Fever, Dengue, Hemorrhagic Dengue, H1N1, and
others. While some people are vaccinated against these, most are not.
And even I am not protected against Dengue as it is a virus that comes
in 5 strains for which there is neither vaccine nor medication. So it's
not a good thing to have mosquitoes, to say the least. Additionally, pit
latrines full of water breed bacteria, smell terrible, grow all sorts
of other bugs, and can contaminate the underground water table.
For this reason Peace Corps Panama has started promoting the composting latrine in many regions. A composting latrine is different from a pit latrine in that first, it is built above ground. Instead of a hole in the dirt, it is a concrete box above the ground divided into 2 compartments, with 1 seat built over each compartment. Each seat is shaped like a typical toilet/latrine seat with one major difference. The front third is sectioned off and funnels down to a pipe to deflect urine out, and the back two thirds is open to the chamber for poop and toilet paper. Additionally, after doing one's business, the user needs to throw 2 handfuls of some type of dry material (mulch, sawdust, dry leaves, dry grass) into the chamber as well. This creates a hot, dry, atmosphere preventing the smell and the growth of mosquitoes.
Composting latrines, when used correctly, seem to solve all the problems, but of course, come with a catch. Maintenance on a pit latrine is almost nonexistent. Build it, use it, more it when it's full. Composters require more attention. The poop/mulch mixture must be stirred each month with a long stick for even decomposition. Gross, but no worse than cleaning out a litter box. And you only have to do it once a month. Here's the complicated part. There's 2 seats, remember? Seat 1 is used for the first year, and seat 2 is covered and left empty. At the start of year 2, seat 1 gets covered and seat 2 is used. At the start of year 3, seat 1 gets emptied by opening a concrete door built into the side of the chamber and seat 2 gets covered and we go back to using seat 1. What has been removed from the chamber of seat 1 is now good compost that can now be used to fertilize crops.
Did you follow all of that? That's where this gets hard. First of all, human beings, by nature, 'have a condition' as my old drafting professor Ed would say. We're allergic to work, and go out of our way to avoid doing things that would aggravate this condition. Before you judge my Panamanians for pooping in the river because it is easier rather than healthier, ask yourself, how many times have you gone to get fast food instead of cooking dinner because it is easier rather than healthier? Same concept.
Secondly, there's that last part. They have just been told to use a latrine rather than a field or river because of the spread of bacteria and micro-organisms. But now they are being told to take that same poop and put it on their crops, 2 years later. It's confusing. It takes a lot of explaining to get across the concept of micro-organisms to someone who has never seen a microscope.
Thirdly, they have been using the river, fields, and wild jungle for hundreds of years. Think about that. HUNDREDS of years. Think about it in the reverse. What if some Panamanian came to your house today, speaking terrible English, to tell you that it was not healthy to use a toilet and it's better to go poop in your backyard. You'd write them off as a crazy foreigner and go back to your day as soon as you could get them out of your house.
So let's say you actually get the concept of composting latrines explained, they understand micro-organisms and bacteria, and how to kill it. They get it, they recognize the problem, and they want to change it. Wow, congratulations. Go celebrate because you have made a major accomplishment.
Now you just have to build a few latrines, right? Haha, no. Projects that install 60, 40, even 15 composting latrines at a time fail at catastrophically high rates due to lack of use, lack of maintenance, and sometimes just lack of completion. We have to start small -REALLY SMALL- and go from there. Put in a few, wait for them to be finished, monitor their use, see how they are received, evaluate how it is and is not being maintained, and then select a few more families to out in a few more. As you can see, this little latrine project is quickly growing beyond a single Volunteer's 2 year service, even more than a 6 year trilogy of Volunteers, the common cycle here in Panama. Regardless of how long the community does have a Volunteer, the idea that the project is reliant on the PCV is not the goal. Rather, we want to teach the community how to do this on their own. Thus, for latrine projects, the formation of a health committee is vital. Health committees are made of a President, VP, Treasurer, maybe a Secretary, and other members at large. They need by-laws and structure just like any other company or organization. Peace Corps Panama is in the process of creating a Health Seminar to instruct all health committees in topics like sanitation, gray water, solid waste, and hand washing. The idea is that the health committee is then responsible for teaching this information to the rest of the community, and works to promote projects along these themes.
Ok, you've got a health committee. Somehow you found 4-8 people to volunteer that understand the importance of promoting these health concepts, who are reliable and responsible, who have some respect in the community, and who hopefully aren't going to get a job tomorrow working in Costa Rica for the next 6 months. (It happens.)
Now, finally, we can start talking about building latrines, making it the project of the health committee. It's not the PCV's idea nor the PCV's project, but (inception!) that of the health committee and what the community chose for itself. This helps negotiate past problem #3 (hundreds of years working against you). Here's the second part of the catch when it comes to composting latrines: They're more expensive. A pit latrine costs about $75 to build. A composter is more like $350. And the river and fields are still free. But your community is impoverished. You see that all families receive welfare checks, the kids get free lunch from the government at school, and traveling doctors come every 1-2 months to provide free medical care. You haven't seen a piece of furniture beyond a wooden bench or table made of rough cut lumber in weeks. But look closer. Many have motors for their wooden canoes- a $1200-$1500 investment. A few have solar panels or gasoline generators that run TVs, DVD players, lights, or a refrigerator for a few hours each week. Kids buy candy from the tiendas on a daily basis. If a latrine was a high priority, if it was something a family really truly valued as critical for their well-being, within a few months to a year nearly all families could afford it.
But not even I am that idealistic. Because, as one community member told the other PCV here in my site, Why am I going to spend the money for something I know that sometime down the road the government will do for me?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the paternalism mentality. They are always given handouts, so they not only then do not want to work for it, but furthermore, truly believe that they are incapable of doing it themselves. This community is a graveyard of failed relief projects. A hydraulic pump system from USAID in 2007 bringing water from the river through an aqueduct to almost every house in the community. It broke during a flood in the first rainy season after it was installed. Remnants of wiring are visible in many houses from a plant they had once upon a time that no longer works. Sheets of zinc to replace the thatch roofs or to use for rainwater catchment rusting on the ground underneath houses, gifted to them 3 years ago. Some expensive farming equipment they don't fully understand how to use nor repair that just sits there.
So...now what? Latrines are needed. Latrines are expensive. The community is not going to pay for them on their own, The community is not going to maintain them and sustain them if they are a free handout.
Time to go back to the health committee. Develop a system to get each family invested, if not financially, then with time and effort. Like Habitat for Humanity's sweat equity program. Require each family to attend a series of health classes put on by the committee and PCV together; to provide their own lumber to build the walls and door; and to gather 3 sacks of dry material before they are allowed into the project. Finally, have each family pay $5 to the health committee as a deposit, to be returned to them upon completion of their latrine.
Awesome. Fantastic. You have 4 families in the project and you are ready to build your first round of latrines!
But hold on a sec. Who's paying for this? Not the community. Not the Volunteer. The most sustainable route is to have it come from their own country, to solicit a Panamanian agency rather than look for US funding and beg your family and friends for money. Because after you leave, what US family and friends will your community have to ask?
So here you are. A recent young college graduate, who has spent the last several weeks, months, maybe years, living in the wild Panamanian jungle that Panamanian city folk would never dare to visit. You bathe in the river, groom with a machete, speak a mishmash of Spanish and tribal phrases, and have to take muddy boat rides and hikes to get anywhere. You have no electricity and limited computer time. Your mirror is the size of your palm. You now need to go present, in as professional a manner as possible, complete with clean clothes, fingernails, and dress shoes, a powerpoint, formal letter of salutation, and official project proposal. Present it to as many representatives in the agency as possible, as high up the ladder as you can get. Don't forget, you are doing all of this in your most academic Spanish as possible. You've also brought along the president of your water committee or leader of your community with you to teach them how to do this and to introduce the agency to actual community faces. (And, let's be honest, help translate the problem.) This may be the first time the community member with you has ever been in the modern, first-world Panama City. Your goal is to earn enough respect from this agency to get them to give money to a 20-something kid with limited Spanish and a farmer. Good luck.
After presentations at the local, regional, and national levels, you wait. For weeks, months, maybe years. No one is ever going to directly tell you no or reject your project, but there is no telling whether or not it is ever going to get past someone's desk. Just one more phone call, one more follow up, one more visit from your Peace Corps boss may be the catalyst the agency needs to green light your project. Or it might not.
Meanwhile, your community is waiting. Wondering if that PCV that seemingly does nothing but sit in the hammock, make phone calls, and eat their food is ever going to get the community those latrines he or she has been talking about for so long. And secretly, that PCV is wondering the same thing.
For this reason Peace Corps Panama has started promoting the composting latrine in many regions. A composting latrine is different from a pit latrine in that first, it is built above ground. Instead of a hole in the dirt, it is a concrete box above the ground divided into 2 compartments, with 1 seat built over each compartment. Each seat is shaped like a typical toilet/latrine seat with one major difference. The front third is sectioned off and funnels down to a pipe to deflect urine out, and the back two thirds is open to the chamber for poop and toilet paper. Additionally, after doing one's business, the user needs to throw 2 handfuls of some type of dry material (mulch, sawdust, dry leaves, dry grass) into the chamber as well. This creates a hot, dry, atmosphere preventing the smell and the growth of mosquitoes.
Composting latrines, when used correctly, seem to solve all the problems, but of course, come with a catch. Maintenance on a pit latrine is almost nonexistent. Build it, use it, more it when it's full. Composters require more attention. The poop/mulch mixture must be stirred each month with a long stick for even decomposition. Gross, but no worse than cleaning out a litter box. And you only have to do it once a month. Here's the complicated part. There's 2 seats, remember? Seat 1 is used for the first year, and seat 2 is covered and left empty. At the start of year 2, seat 1 gets covered and seat 2 is used. At the start of year 3, seat 1 gets emptied by opening a concrete door built into the side of the chamber and seat 2 gets covered and we go back to using seat 1. What has been removed from the chamber of seat 1 is now good compost that can now be used to fertilize crops.
Did you follow all of that? That's where this gets hard. First of all, human beings, by nature, 'have a condition' as my old drafting professor Ed would say. We're allergic to work, and go out of our way to avoid doing things that would aggravate this condition. Before you judge my Panamanians for pooping in the river because it is easier rather than healthier, ask yourself, how many times have you gone to get fast food instead of cooking dinner because it is easier rather than healthier? Same concept.
Secondly, there's that last part. They have just been told to use a latrine rather than a field or river because of the spread of bacteria and micro-organisms. But now they are being told to take that same poop and put it on their crops, 2 years later. It's confusing. It takes a lot of explaining to get across the concept of micro-organisms to someone who has never seen a microscope.
Thirdly, they have been using the river, fields, and wild jungle for hundreds of years. Think about that. HUNDREDS of years. Think about it in the reverse. What if some Panamanian came to your house today, speaking terrible English, to tell you that it was not healthy to use a toilet and it's better to go poop in your backyard. You'd write them off as a crazy foreigner and go back to your day as soon as you could get them out of your house.
So let's say you actually get the concept of composting latrines explained, they understand micro-organisms and bacteria, and how to kill it. They get it, they recognize the problem, and they want to change it. Wow, congratulations. Go celebrate because you have made a major accomplishment.
Now you just have to build a few latrines, right? Haha, no. Projects that install 60, 40, even 15 composting latrines at a time fail at catastrophically high rates due to lack of use, lack of maintenance, and sometimes just lack of completion. We have to start small -REALLY SMALL- and go from there. Put in a few, wait for them to be finished, monitor their use, see how they are received, evaluate how it is and is not being maintained, and then select a few more families to out in a few more. As you can see, this little latrine project is quickly growing beyond a single Volunteer's 2 year service, even more than a 6 year trilogy of Volunteers, the common cycle here in Panama. Regardless of how long the community does have a Volunteer, the idea that the project is reliant on the PCV is not the goal. Rather, we want to teach the community how to do this on their own. Thus, for latrine projects, the formation of a health committee is vital. Health committees are made of a President, VP, Treasurer, maybe a Secretary, and other members at large. They need by-laws and structure just like any other company or organization. Peace Corps Panama is in the process of creating a Health Seminar to instruct all health committees in topics like sanitation, gray water, solid waste, and hand washing. The idea is that the health committee is then responsible for teaching this information to the rest of the community, and works to promote projects along these themes.
Ok, you've got a health committee. Somehow you found 4-8 people to volunteer that understand the importance of promoting these health concepts, who are reliable and responsible, who have some respect in the community, and who hopefully aren't going to get a job tomorrow working in Costa Rica for the next 6 months. (It happens.)
Now, finally, we can start talking about building latrines, making it the project of the health committee. It's not the PCV's idea nor the PCV's project, but (inception!) that of the health committee and what the community chose for itself. This helps negotiate past problem #3 (hundreds of years working against you). Here's the second part of the catch when it comes to composting latrines: They're more expensive. A pit latrine costs about $75 to build. A composter is more like $350. And the river and fields are still free. But your community is impoverished. You see that all families receive welfare checks, the kids get free lunch from the government at school, and traveling doctors come every 1-2 months to provide free medical care. You haven't seen a piece of furniture beyond a wooden bench or table made of rough cut lumber in weeks. But look closer. Many have motors for their wooden canoes- a $1200-$1500 investment. A few have solar panels or gasoline generators that run TVs, DVD players, lights, or a refrigerator for a few hours each week. Kids buy candy from the tiendas on a daily basis. If a latrine was a high priority, if it was something a family really truly valued as critical for their well-being, within a few months to a year nearly all families could afford it.
But not even I am that idealistic. Because, as one community member told the other PCV here in my site, Why am I going to spend the money for something I know that sometime down the road the government will do for me?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the paternalism mentality. They are always given handouts, so they not only then do not want to work for it, but furthermore, truly believe that they are incapable of doing it themselves. This community is a graveyard of failed relief projects. A hydraulic pump system from USAID in 2007 bringing water from the river through an aqueduct to almost every house in the community. It broke during a flood in the first rainy season after it was installed. Remnants of wiring are visible in many houses from a plant they had once upon a time that no longer works. Sheets of zinc to replace the thatch roofs or to use for rainwater catchment rusting on the ground underneath houses, gifted to them 3 years ago. Some expensive farming equipment they don't fully understand how to use nor repair that just sits there.
So...now what? Latrines are needed. Latrines are expensive. The community is not going to pay for them on their own, The community is not going to maintain them and sustain them if they are a free handout.
Time to go back to the health committee. Develop a system to get each family invested, if not financially, then with time and effort. Like Habitat for Humanity's sweat equity program. Require each family to attend a series of health classes put on by the committee and PCV together; to provide their own lumber to build the walls and door; and to gather 3 sacks of dry material before they are allowed into the project. Finally, have each family pay $5 to the health committee as a deposit, to be returned to them upon completion of their latrine.
Awesome. Fantastic. You have 4 families in the project and you are ready to build your first round of latrines!
But hold on a sec. Who's paying for this? Not the community. Not the Volunteer. The most sustainable route is to have it come from their own country, to solicit a Panamanian agency rather than look for US funding and beg your family and friends for money. Because after you leave, what US family and friends will your community have to ask?
So here you are. A recent young college graduate, who has spent the last several weeks, months, maybe years, living in the wild Panamanian jungle that Panamanian city folk would never dare to visit. You bathe in the river, groom with a machete, speak a mishmash of Spanish and tribal phrases, and have to take muddy boat rides and hikes to get anywhere. You have no electricity and limited computer time. Your mirror is the size of your palm. You now need to go present, in as professional a manner as possible, complete with clean clothes, fingernails, and dress shoes, a powerpoint, formal letter of salutation, and official project proposal. Present it to as many representatives in the agency as possible, as high up the ladder as you can get. Don't forget, you are doing all of this in your most academic Spanish as possible. You've also brought along the president of your water committee or leader of your community with you to teach them how to do this and to introduce the agency to actual community faces. (And, let's be honest, help translate the problem.) This may be the first time the community member with you has ever been in the modern, first-world Panama City. Your goal is to earn enough respect from this agency to get them to give money to a 20-something kid with limited Spanish and a farmer. Good luck.
After presentations at the local, regional, and national levels, you wait. For weeks, months, maybe years. No one is ever going to directly tell you no or reject your project, but there is no telling whether or not it is ever going to get past someone's desk. Just one more phone call, one more follow up, one more visit from your Peace Corps boss may be the catalyst the agency needs to green light your project. Or it might not.
Meanwhile, your community is waiting. Wondering if that PCV that seemingly does nothing but sit in the hammock, make phone calls, and eat their food is ever going to get the community those latrines he or she has been talking about for so long. And secretly, that PCV is wondering the same thing.
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