WASH Project

WASH Project: From the Beginning

The tragic story of the Cap-Haitien dump

Less than two decades ago, there was a dump site for both solid and human wastes in Cap-Haitien, complete with a composting operation for organics (not human wastes), and a number of honey wagons for emptying latrines and septic tanks and disposing of the waste in pits. When people talk about Coup d’états, they lament the brutal physical violence that leaves people terrorized and the economic violence that blocks the development of the country and creates poverty, but rarely do they include the insidious and lasting mental violence brought on by good projects abandoned and hopes shattered… The damage of realizing that your neighborhood, your city, your country is moving backwards into squalor and filth.  Since 2004, the Cap Haitien dump site has not been used, the mangrove swamp that protected it from tidal flooding (and also protected the water from the garbage) has been largely cut down, the compost area is overgrown, and people are living in the spot where there used to empty latrine pits.

During the Coup years, local racketeers took advantage of the insecurity and seized the dump site land--which is technically owned by the government---and sold it to poor squatters needing a spot to build a house at hot prices, $30 for a house size plot.  At the same time, garbage piled up on the streets of the city. Just recently the mayor’s office received a donation of 3 garbage trucks to finally begin removing garbage from the streets again.

Everybody poops and someone has to deal with it.

Leaving them no choice but to temporarily reopen the former dump site until the politically difficult process of finding a new one is complete. Now poor displaced people are living among randomly dumped piles of garbage like the one in this photo. Latrine and septic wastes are not yet accepted at the site…so where DO they go?

People who empty latrines in Haiti, commonly called the “bayakou” are considered the lowest rung on the social ladder. They are harassed at night by bandits who hide in the alleys to exact bribes for letting them pass, they face arrest for dumping their “merchandise” in inappropriate locations even though an appropriate location has not been designated, they are pelted with rocks by neighbors angry that they are moving and disposing of the material in the neighborhood, and they endure working conditions that would make OSHA and the EPA cringe, for example, descending up to their shoulders into latrines which can contain broken plates, syringes, bottles, and then removing the material with their hands and plates, transporting it for miles in sacks or buckets on huge two wheeled carts, and dumping it (usually) in the ocean.  

You might wonder why anyone would take this job, but many bayakou admit that their trade has allowed them to feed their family and send their kids all the way through school—a major accomplishment in a country where most people are malnourished and less than 50% of people finish 6^th grade. 

Where there is no outhouse…

Unfortunately the majority of people in Haiti do not have access to any kind of toilet at all.  This problem is pronounced in Shada, the poorest community in Cap-Haïtien where SOIL has chosen to focus our energy.  There are few latrines and those that are operating are dug into the water table.  Most people squat on bank of the estuary or use a “flying toilet”--a grocery bag that is tied up and flung away.  People’s houses are built so close together that most do not have room to build a latrine, even if they did have the money.  SOIL has been promoting above ground ecological dry toilets for this flood prone area.  Dry toilets collect the urine separately from the feces in the toilet seat and do not use water. We built three public dry toilets (which fill up very quickly because they are so heavily used) and there really isn’t much space to build more.  We’ve been dreaming of a way to take our dry toilets indoors.

The WASH Project

The WASH Innovation Project is a collaboration between SOIL/SOL and Oxfam GB to address some of these issues.  It is a small project of about $95,000, aimed at pilot testing and improving new ideas and sharing these learnings around the world.  Oxfam will focus on working with bayakou while SOIL/SOL will focus on promoting ecological sanitation and composting.  The project has 3 parts:

Increase appreciation and support for the job done by the bayakou and improve their working conditions by helping them to form a professional association, educating the community on proper use of latrines (no plates or syringes!), pilot testing a hand pump that eliminates the need to submerge oneself in a latrine to empty it, providing safety equipment, moving toward ecological sanitation options that are easier and safer to empty, and working toward an official site dump site.

Promote ecological sanitation (ECOSAN) by providing public dry toilets in 4 communities that have not yet experienced ECOSAN.  SOIL/SOL has more than 60 letters from neighborhoods/communities asking for public toilets.  A public dry toilet is a way that a community can try out the dry toilet technology before committing to doing it at home.  After the community is familiar with the new technology, and if they are still interested, we can move toward household models.

Develop an indoor dry toilet model with compost site and pilot test it with 25 families in Shada The indoor dry toilet will funnel urine to a soak pit (one day we will collect it) and the feces will be collected in a 5 gallon bucket under the toilet seat and covered after each use with sugar cane bagass—a waste product from the local rum plant. Once a week, the buckets will be collected and taken to a site where the contents will be composted in hand turned windrows. The 25 families will receive a fresh bucket and more sugar cane bagass for covering.  The process will be managed by two community groups who will collect a small fee for the bucket collection ($1.50/month) and who will encourage proper use of the toilets in the community.  The Engineers without Borders student group at the University of Minnesota has been working on a toilet seat design for us to use.