Working Progress: Improvements and Designs 18/11 – 23/11

It’s not always rainbows and butterfly fish in Cape Town.  Sometimes we actually have work to do, and we did a lot of it this week.

Drawing pictures of improvements

The main things we’ve been focusing on this week have been minor improvements to the current WaSH facility (built last year) and designing a new, dry sanitation facility in Zwelitsha.  On Monday we worked with the caretakers of the current facility to brainstorm what they like and dislike about the current facility, and ways we could improve the aspects they don’t like.  We found drawing pictures was a successful way to bridge the language barrier, and have fun with the work.

Co-Researchers Siya, Funeka, and Noncedo
Nobathembu also pictured on right

On Tuesday we finally got three co-researchers.  “Co-researchers” are members of the community paid by the project centre who agree to devote time each week to help us in our work to communicate with the community, whether that means translating for us or talking to people after we leave for the day.  We will run all potential designs by these co-researchers, who will in turn use the community interest to give us feedback. 

Potential new location for Dry Sanitation Facilit

While we were meeting with our co researchers at one of the potential sites for our new facility, one of them noticed that there was a shack across the street with a large plot of land that could be a better location for our facility.  The main advantage is that the shack is built on a flat piece of land that will be easy for construction, as opposed to the hill across the street that we were planning on working with.  Our co-researchers offered to talk to the man who owned the shack when he was home.  Apparently, he would be agreeable to giving us his land as long as he gets another plot in the settlement.  Right now our co-researchers are looking for a new spot to which he could move.   It’s looking likely that we will be able to build there.

Using the community input, we have started designing potential layouts of our new facility.  I got the dimensions of the Enviro Loo units and spent a couple of late nights making SolidWorks mock ups of two different designs.  On Friday we showed them to Olwethu, the architect at CORC who was really impressed with our work.  He now will tweak those to make a more official, final design for approval and building purposes. 

Draft 1: Maximizing Social Space                                  

Draft 2: Maximizing Toilets

Victoria (caretaker) at Building Express

On Thursday we also took Victoria, one of the caretakers at the current WaSH facility, to a hardware store to start buying improvements.  We bought some mirrors, which will improve the aesthetics of the facility, a large trashcan, and a towel bar/towel for hand drying (right now people just shake water off after washing).  We left our purchases with the caretakers, in hopes that they or the community leaders will take initiative to make these improvements themselves. However if they are not installed by next week, we will probably just install them ourselves to push this effort forward.

After we got back from shopping, we had a lunch meeting with a man named David.  David owns the largest business in Langrug, a restaurant called Batho’s Place.  We wanted to talk to him because we heard that he and his wife have been getting professional public health training for their restaurant.  We are hoping that as we open more WaSH facilities, we can have caretakers be trained in public health, who in turn can educate the community members who use the facilities.   David is really an inspiring man.  His English is very good because he is also a tour guide who gives tours of informal settlements to people who are interested in investing in upgrades.  When he in not doing this or running his restaurant, he holds soup kitchens, plans new crèches (preschools) and lends a hand in the community wherever needed.  Our lunch date actually had gotten rescheduled because earlier in the week he was rebuilding a neighbor’s shack that had collapsed during the weekend storm.  As he puts it, “one day we’re all going to die, and it’s what we can leave behind for others that we can measure our lives with.”  Needless to say, he is very willing to help educate the community on public health.  I only wish we could work with him more.  If nothing else, for the African hot dogs he served us.

David on the roof patio of Batho's Place

On Saturday we sponsored a field trip for 18 community members from Zwelitsha to visit Signal Hill to see the Enviro Loo toilets for themselves.  Only one member of our group was able to be there (since the rest of us were on a Wine Tour – blog post on this coming soon), along with Scott (our advisor) and one of our sponsors.  The community was very pleased with what they saw.  Scott however was not as impressed, and wants us to look more into the functionality of the toilet before we commit WPI’s grant money to a partnership. 

WPI received a substantial grant from General Electric three years ago to implement sustainable WaSH facilities in Langrug.  About half of this grant went toward the facility constructed last year.  We can use the remaining funding for our project, at Scott’s discretion. It seems our project is getting very real very quickly.  We have our work cut out for us in the next few weeks.