UB study brings enviro-safe toilets to Ngami
Baboki Kayawe | Wednesday February 4, 2015 11:08
But human waste can play havoc with the ecosystem, as it not only pollutes the environment but also destroys lakes and rivers by starving them of oxygen.
Now an experimental work with “dry-sanitation” a human waste collection system, that promises not only to get rid of the waste, but to also put it to good use, has begun in the Ngamiland district.
Professor Barbara Ngwenya of the University of Botswana’s Okavango Research Institute and head researcher in the project dubbed “Sanitation in Primary Schools”, explains that under waterless sanitation not a drop of water is used in toilets as is the case with flush technology.
The bonus, she says, is that with ‘dry sanitation’ system there is no need to treat or transport human excreta.
Ngwenya explains her research was preceded by a baseline study – a situation analysis really - in 2011, of the state of water and sanitation in 21 primary schools in Ngamiland region.
“The issue of defecation then arose because if water is not there, and the facilities are blocked and the toilets are waterborne, then open or bush defecation is inevitable,” she says.
But it was not really just water shortage in the schools, that forced learners to use the bush.
“The study found out that the diameter of toilet seats were standard hence not child friendly. Sanitation and hygiene were very poor in the two focal schools of Matlapana Primary School in Maun and Shorobe Primary School,” she says. Part of the problem also lay in the fact that sanitation facilities were stressed.
“You will find that a school with a population of about 700 pupils had only four blocks of toilets, which strains the available facilities, and leads to children defecating in the open,” says Ngwenya.
She continues: “We found out that sanitation and hygiene were generally poor as facilities were malfunctioning, dilapidated and inadequate.
Ngwenya, an anthropologist and social worker argues that sanitation should not be understood to mean infrastructure alone, as it is a collaboration of comfort, hygiene and water availability.
It was against this backdrop that the research intervened through the design and construction of dry-toilets - one block with four units in each of the two primary schools.
A revolutionary technology, waterless toilets require no water and chemicals, but makes use of radiant heat and wind to evaporate and dehydrate waste matter, turning it into a safe, stabilised and odourless dry material that is greatly suitable for use as manure.
“The research, which concluded late 2014, engaged the expertise of a civil engineer and health specialist, and the intervention project was designed such that the water table was higher, to avoid underground water contamination,” she says.
Ngwenya hopes the Ministry of Education will take cue from her groundbreaking work.” It is really a question of resources and technologies to address the issue,” she says.
“Poorly managed fecal loads in and outside the schools are a health hazard to individual learners, households and communities and are likely to compromise the integrity of the [Okavango] Delta ecosystem,” she says in her research synopsis.
Further, she says, water contamination increases the risk of infectious gastro-intestinal diseases to which children are particularly vulnerable.
The overall objective of the pilot project was to improve the sanitation and hygiene facilities in three primary schools in the Okavango sub-district.
It also sought to determine the gaps and deficiencies in the existing sanitation technologies and hygiene practices, as well as improve water supply for hygiene and vegetable production through refurbishing the rainwater-harvesting infrastructure.
Among other stakeholders in the study and construction of the toilets were the Ngami District Council and the Ministry of Education.