Not as easy as I thought, not that I thought it was going to be easy at all.  Why is it that I think that I have something to offer?  What really is my motivation for doing this?
I met with a woman who runs an NGO in northern Bangladesh yesterday.  She must be in her 60's, about half my height, double my strength, and triple my intelligence.  She's been working in social work her whole life.  I wouldn't say she was entirely critical of my ideas, but there were certain points that I could tell that she was secretly rolling her eyes about when I brought them up.
Her NGO started a slum relocation program to help families move out of the slums of Dinajpur into their own houses.  They called the program Apon Thikana, which means, Own Address, because before now, none of the families had their own address.  Imagine living your entire life without being able to tell friends or family members where you live.
Her organization worked together with a German NGO called Shanti on this particular project.  I wasn't there during the process, but I've heard stories of the frustration on both sides.  People have been building out of mud for hundreds of years in this part of Bangladesh, and for the ecologically minded Germans, this was the perfect building material.  For Chhabi Apa, who'd lived through the floods of 1968 and seen entire villages made of mud houses wash away, this was a step backwards.  And it isn't even cheaper to build out of mud in this area, because the soil isn't suitable.
What makes me think I know better than the people who have lived there and worked there for generations?  What can I add to improve their quality of life?  I started thinking maybe I have this all wrong.  Maybe the point of my study is to learn from them.  Maybe we are the ones that are lacking.  Driving home from my in-laws I saw an old farmhouse being renovated with mud infill. The people we bought our RV in had a mud house.  Two other of my friends live in mud houses in Germany.  Maybe the point is for me to learn how the Bangladeshi's build and make creative use of their resources and bring the hundreds of years of knowledge back home instead of trying to find the latest technology from over there to upset their balance.

A few years ago I was inspired by a company that designed a machine that compressed a mixture of soil and cement to form blocks stable enough to build houses with using only the strength of four men. No water, no firing (i.e. no wood burned), and a fraction of cement otherwise used to make concrete blocks.  The one I read about was developed by a company called KickStart.  They call their design the Money Maker Block Press, but they have developed many other technologies to serve the poor to help them make enough income to get above the poverty line: water pumps geared towards farmers with small amounts of land, oil presses, and they have more products in development.

What I'd like to see is a block press machine that can be operated by a few women, who probably have children or grandchildren hanging off of them all at the same time.  I saw women working at building sites in rural Bangladesh, even though every one told me, building is not considered "women's work."  They carried water to the site and baskets of broken bricks, nothing "heavy" enough to be considered man's work.  And I'm sure not paid half as well either.  But what if women were given the chance to participate in higher paying jobs?  Would it steal work from able bodied men?  Would it create too much of a burden on women who are still responsible for taking care of the home and feeding the family?

I met a family that was able to move out of the slums of Dinajpur by working together with another family to grind wheat and make roti's to sell at the market.  Within ten years they had a block house with a nice roof that wasn't going to be taken away anytime soon.  The father bought the wheat at the market.  The grandmother and mother took turns grinding the wheat with a foot pedal, which they then prepared the roti's from, which in turn were sold by the men of the family.  This stays within the cultural norms, men working outside the house, women staying within the parameters of their housing compound.  But what happens when one doesn't have a the luxury of a normal family unit?  How do you then fit into society's norms and rules?

My grandmother was part of a normal family, with a house, a husband and at the time, 5 children.  But then my grandfather left (hence the 6 year gap between my father and his older brother) for some reason, and my grandmother had to somehow feed her family on her own.  So she made candle wicks out of cotton that could be sold at the market.  But being a Brahmin, she couldn't sell anything at the market, so she had to go through a middleman which she lost half her profit to.  I can understand society wanting to 'protect' women from the bad parts of society (or is that just my mom's voice I am hearing in my head?).  But to be thrust into poverty because you don't fit the mold.  That I don't get.

Humanure?  Yeah, I know dealing with human excrement can be really gross.  Even after potty training 3 kids, and living with three cats (one of whom will poop in my living room when she’s pissed off at me) I still haven’t gotten over the horror of it all.  But I came across some interesting ways of dealing with it, one that even turns the business of pooping into a business!

Composting toilets have been around for a long time, but never really caught in the developed world because, I guess, it just sounds gross.  When I was growing up we never composted our grass cutting or our leaves (who ever thought it would be a good idea to spend the afternoon raking leaves, then put them in PLASTIC bags that needed to be brought up to the curb to be added to a landfill?) let alone our own bodily waste.  But having gone to a high school built on a landfill, where the gymnasium sank an inch, I’m thinking it’s time to stop adding to mess and start finding a way to deal with it.

I came across a non-profit organization called SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihood) that works in Haiti, turns waste into a resource.  Ecological Sanitation collects human waste, composts it and reuses it in agriculture and reforestation.  In Haiti, agricultural productivity is stymied by poor soil fertility, soil erosion and lack of fertilizers.  SOIL addresses the needs of waste management and public health and in turn helps farmers improve crop production and feed the nation.

The way dry toilets work is simple.  The urine is separated from the solid waste, usually through a diverting channel, and can be either absorbed into the soil or collected for use in agricultural fields.  The solid waste is collected in a separate chamber and can be combined with several drying agents: leaves, ash, sawdust, etc., which helps keeps out the smell.  Once the poop is dried out and becomes compost, all the disease carrying pathogens are gone, and the product can be uses as another fertilizer in the field.

Where the business of pooping becomes a business is when the people who aren’t afraid of poop charge a collection fee to their poopaphobic  neighbors for collection of their waste, which is then composted with other materials and sold to farmers as fertilizer.

For more information, check out the SOIL website at http://www.oursoil.org/ and http://www.ecosanres.org/index.htm for more information about sustainable sanitation in the developing world.

 

Small changes can often make a huge difference.  They don’t have to be expensive or require special technologies.  Take for instance the Big Boda Load-Carrying Bike, designed by WorldBike. Used in Kenya, it basically reinforces the frame of the bike and lengthens the back seat so that it can carry more weight.  That means a farmer can take two or three extra loads of goods to the market and double or triple their earning capacity. 

In Nigeria, Mohammed Bah Abba designed a simple method of preserving goods using commonly used, readily available ceramic pots. It basically consists of a small pot placed inside a larger pot, with the space in between filled with water and sand.  The crops, vegetables, fruits, are kept in the inner pot and as the water evaporates, it pulls heat from the interior of the inner pot and keeps its contents cool.  Tomatoes can be kept for twenty-one days instead of two or three.  Goods can then be stored longer, and sold on demand.  Freeing time for things before thought unimaginable, like going to school.

In Bangladesh I met a group of former slum dwellers who were given the opportunity, through a micro-credit program and training in income-generating activities, to own their homes.  Without the daily fear of their homes being torn down, they were able to concentrate on long term solutions to their financial problems.  They had a much better sense of self- worth.  They no longer agreed to working all day for a farmer who wanted to pay them 10 taka (10 cents) for what would take a entire days work.  There were now many more other opportunities open to them, they were no longer so desperate that they had to take the first job that came along.  Hopefully the farmer will learn he needs to pay a fare wage if he wants to get the work done.

Sometimes given the opportunity to close your eyes for a few minutes, take a deep breath and daydream of new possibilities makes all the difference in the world.

For more information on inexpensive designs that make big differences in the lives of the poor, check out Design for the Other 90%, Published by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Museum http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/.